The 'dangerous' part about using EM for changes, is that you have no explicit transaction control. If you click the wrong button - oops - no other choice than to...

Ah, I see... Well, I guess you're stuck with some 'ugly' iterative (ie cursor) process to build this result then. I don't belive it's possible to produce an output like...

I'm not quite clear what the table looks like or how you want your results, but assuming the table and it's data looks something like this;

create table #receipt

(...

Perhaps you should also consider devoting some time to read about select, insert, update and delete statements in BOL (Books On Line).

It's well spent effort.

Yes, the update syntax may be a bit deluding, but it's the only (afaik) syntax that is supported for this 'trick'. Though, I haven't actually confirmed how supported it is,...

There are virtually tons of good info about all aspects on locking in BOL. I urge you to take a look there.

/Kenneth

To back up to Pop's original question: Yes and yes.

As written it's the same as just deleting the millions of rows right away. It's very likely that the table will...

Ok, so it's more like a relatively static report-thingy then?

Here's one way to prep a flattened table, though you're aware that your current table seem to be in pretty 'bad'...

One also wonders why there is two db's when the second db only contains views of objects in the first db...?

Better (but I'm sure for one reason or other not...

Locking hints have different scopes, depending on the hint and also the isolation level. Locking as a subject is quite huge, there are even entire books dedicated to it.

It's quite messy to do in Transact SQL - however possible, but ugly as ****

Though, I'm not too sure that it would play well with a view...

The preferred place to...

I'm guessing it's a char column and not a varchar..?

Try

select right(RTRIM(month),4) as year from <table name>

/Kenneth

sysdepends is broken, has always been broken and is not 100% accurate.

If you want to be thorough, and absolutely sure you get everything...

Also, don't forget that with errorhandling also comes transaction handling!

If you get just a wee bit more complicated than the simple illustration example, then it's very likely that you also...

Why messing with dynamic SQL in the first place?

What is the purpose of this exercise? Does it have to be dynamic?

/Kenneth