pmfji, but there are a few things I'm not quite clear about..

What is the end purpose of all this? It seems to me much like reinventing the wheel, by triggers...

Not necessarily. This behaviour is controlled by SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON|OFF

Depending on if this setting is on or off,

string + null may be:

string

or

null

/Kenneth

In this case, the sp_OAxxx procs are overkill.

imo, they are to be avoided if possible. There are way too many issues with sp_OAxxx procs for me to consider them as...

Parsename works just fine for this (and actually would be perfect for the title-part, since that may make it a four-part name)

...and yeah,...

Just for diversity, here's one way to do it the Transact SQL way (ie setbased)

..assumptions: three columns output - first, middle and last...

If you have the same phonenumber several times, only with different dates, and you want to find then 'newest', then...

select  phonenum, MAX(date) as maxDate

from myTable

group by phonenum

...will find the...

Is it necessary to have this reflected in real time? If it is, perhaps replication would be more suitable. If real-time isn't required, a batch solution, run at some convenient...

..it's not the first, I assure you

The thing with cursors is just that they shouldn't be anyones first choice - they do however...

If the URL to be updated is guranteed to be found within the first 8000 chars, this will work. If the text column may be larger, you might need to...

Must confess I don't use openquery that much, but from what it looks like, openquery doesn't support four part naming..?

-- snip BOL --

Syntax

OPENQUERY ( linked_server , 'query' )

Arguments

linked_server

Is...

There are a few different ways and techniques to have two servers exchange data. Which one is 'best' largely depends on the particular requirements.

You may want to read some in...

Perhaps a small example of the two tables, a few rows data and the desired output, illustrating the problem would clear things up then.

Why not just do it plain and simple?

SELECT TOP 1 b.column1, b.column2, ....

FROM  tableA a

JOIN  tableB b

ON    a.PK = b.PK

/Kenneth

You probably have one or more users in the database.

Make sure that noone is using the database, then try again.

sp_who2 is an easy way to see in which db's users...

This is one way to do it:

use northwind

select top 1

       x.employeeId

from  (

        select  top 2

                employeeId

          from  employees

          order by employeeId desc

      ) x

order by x.employeeId...