You shouldn't like the idea, really. Dynamic SQL is a last-resort solution when nothing else have a chance of success. The reason you shouldn't like it, is that it comes...

To reproduce, you can do one of two things.

Log on to your workstation with the same account that your SQL Server service is using, or go tho the server and...

To verify if it's a quote issue or not, try first a test on the local machine only and with paths without spaces. Something like

set @cmd = 'D:\7ZIP\7z.exe a D:\myTestFile.zip...

Still, it's essential to first make the decision if the count needed should be approximate or absolute.

For all purposes, if approximate is good enough, then any of the variants looking...

Well, I was more thinking (hoping ) that it was perhaps like the last 12 months that was the 'active' part so to...

How large are your tables? Would it be possible to instead have a single table for the last 12 months? (assuming that's about how far back your views go)

If it...

You connect to it like you connect to any other 'network-device'.

If it's from the internal LAN, you need to make sure that your connecting computer can find it's way to...

Can you also post a few rows of data that demonstrates what you have to work with, along with the desired report-output from that sample data?

(please post data in the...

You may look at xp_crypt http://www.database-encryption.com/xpcrypt.html

Though I haven't used it, so I can't say if it's good or not.

(on the other hand you could ask your boss why he...

This is strange indeed, and unfortunately I can't repro it.

On both 2000 and 2005 the example above returns the expected string. No sign of the strange truncate behaviour.

Could you expand a bit on exactly what you're looking for?

/Kenneth

Per definition, a 'regular user' aren't allowed to take a backup of any database. This is logical, since if anyone could do it, then anyone could snitch a copy of...

The one difference that may arise if when we have numbers as strings, and we impose 'our' way of how to sort 'numerics strings'.

declare @x table ( v...

Yes, all things are relative. 4 GB may be huge, or it may be small, it all depends on the perspective.

Michael, 'large reports' is a defenite 'tempdb-enlarger'. It may be...

Actually, there is always a presentation layer.

I know what you're thinking, Jeff, and for pure batch scenarios the 'presentation layer' is the receiving end...