this might help a little bit:

the Us Census Bureau put together the most common male first names, female first names, and most common last names:

http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/names_files.html

90% of the names in...

you won't have any problem with the SELECT @variable, 'Any constant',col1,col2 from SomeTable Format; it's very common to need to do that.

usually, i create two roles in this situation.

one, just as you describe, that gives a user db_datareader and db_datawriter for example.

then i create a second role, and it';s sole purpose...

also SQL Recon from Special Ops Security[/url] is free and does a great job as well as doing some quickie analysis like blank passwords and a best guess at which...

maybe something is missing in your code snippet, but you declare a variables like @activityID and @UpdateLogin, never assign them a value, but then use then to insert into...

i understand why you are breaking everything into step by step...it's easy to understand logically.

however, perfomance wise, you can do everything together in one swoop...get the emails, remove duplicates, and...

also, i notice you are inserting into two tables : "MasterList" and "maintable";

i would think you would be inserting into just one temp table, right? and the exists should bee...

bit of a logic hole there.

a GO statement cannot exist in a stored procedure. when you run that statement it creates a stored proc that only does one thing...deletes from...

VALUES SELECT

it's one or the other, never both...

you either insert into (columnlist) values(val1,val2,etc)

OR

insert into (columnlist) select val1,val2,etc from somesource.

an extra pair of eyes always helps in these situations..trees and...

here's an example of Sergiy's suggestion:

begin tran

select top 1 * from mytable with (tablockx) --exclusive table lock this table to me and my transaction

--do more stuff

commit tran --commit the tran,...

SET XACT_ABORT ON only works in combination with BEGIN TRAN and COMMIT TRAN.you set XACT_ABORT on just once...and that is how it works for the session, or until you explicitly...

this is just a WAG, but every A.ItemCode would only have one status, right?

don't you need a rollup by Customer of all the status?

something like the query below, that you...

glad it worked for you; you clearly grasped the concept once you got an example.

way to go.

wouldn't problems with distributed transactions be because the "Distributed Transaction Coordinator" service one one or both servers are not running / on manual start instead of automatic?

ok i learned i can alias a linked server, excellent...

but even though i explicitly said to use a SQLOLEDB provider, when i look as sys.servers, SQLNCLI is being used, as...