Um, OK, then how's this for an answer:

one starts with an 'F'?

or

One is listed in sysobjects with type 'FN' and the other has a 'P'...

Is this multiple choice?

Use a between in the JOIN and CASE for result columns

SELECT CASE a.begin_date< b.begin_date THEN b.begin_date ELSE a.begin_date END AS common_from_date

          ,CASE a.end_date<b.end_date THEN a.end_date ELSE b.end_date END AS common_to_date

  ...

GO and ; are specific language elements only understood by certain client programs.

SQL QA and ISQL/OSQL (as client applications) are written to understand GO and can be configured to use...

sp_% procs are available anywhere only if they exist in the master db.  That proc is in the MSDB database so you'll need to qualify it:

exec msdb..sp_help_maintenance_plan

Yes, but:

declare @a varchar(1000)

select @a = ISNULL( @a, '' ) + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),id ) + ','

FROM sysobjects

ORDER BY id

SELECT @a

Works.  That is, with no calc in the order...

OK I didn't read thru your syntax, but if you want records in table A that are not in table B then outer join is how I always do this...

SELECT...

Have you tried letting the client put in the line breaks, as in:

INSERT INTO T VALUES ( 'a', 'line 1

line 2

line 3

line 4' )

You need to get familiar with the system tables within SQL server. then you can easily create utility procs to do things like this for you:

DECLARE @collist VARCHAR(3000)

select @collist...

I'm not real familiar with Access, but my old fallback is to turn on the SQLProfiler and see for certain exactly what is being sent by the client.  (in days...

I think you're going to find that the data is truncated before the insert.  You didn't mention how the insert is taking place.  What is the syntax used? are you...

As best I can tell, it allows >8k only when it is a constant:

exec sp_executesql N' bla..

bla...

...out to 20k' --<--end quote

I have executed more than 8k with EXEC as...

Surely there's a client side reporting tool that does this,

but if not, why not use a stored proc to create the result set?

you could always stage into a temp table:

SELECT IDENTITY( INT, 1, 1) as seq

       ,* --column list

  INTO #stage

  FROM sourcetable

INSERT INTO destinationtable( column list)

   SELECT ..., 'user'+CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), seq)

      FROM #stage

select distinct a.keycolumn

from tablex a

       join tablex b ON a.startdate between b.startdate and b.enddate

                         OR a.enddate between b.startdate and b.enddate