you are on the right track as using an identity to help generate the varchar; that's the way we've suggested it for similar issues.

like JKSQL said, the way to do...

here's an example:

create table test (id int identity, category varchar(100),

name varchar(100), allnames varchar(8000) null)

insert test (category, name)

select 'fruit', 'apple' union

select 'fruit', 'pear' union

select 'fruit', 'orange' union

select 'meat' , 'beef'...

the other important question is, how often does the remote data change? what is the time tolerence for the application(is it bad that the data is 1 min/10 min/1 day...

it sounds like if someone runs a SELECT command, you want to make sure you have the "latest and greatest" data from remote servers/locations, is that right?

instead of running yourstored...

just remove the GO just before the ALTER command:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO

changes to

SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

i would simply pass the ALTER...

excellent post by providing the table and data...thank you!

The thing is, DISTINCT is used against all selected columns...so if you select * from 3 tables, you probably are not going...

in SSMS or Query analyzer, you can't...as you identified, the GO statements start a new batch, and you can't interupt the processing of the batches without raising an error severity...

a Federated Table is kind of neat in MYSQL: basically Federated tables are tables with storage in a remote server.

The closest equivilent in SQL would be a view which points...

well the way to do it is to add a check constriant on the column, and the check contraint uses a user defined function:

CREATE TABLE WHATEVER(

WHATEVERID INT,

DBNAME sysname CHECK(dbo.CheckDBName(DBNAME)...

i missed that multple result part:

to insert from a EXEC(storedproc), you have to know the columns that will be returned by the stored procedure...there's no wayt around that, so if...

it's just a copy/paste error

change

Group by Select Case

to

Group by Case

two ways, but you HAVE to know which column in my_table determines the order for the ORDER BY:

I'm just assuming there is a TABLEID

SELECT * FROM (

select *, ...

maybe the table was imported under a different schema/user, so you only have read rights to that schema?

just use the other CASE syntax:

select case

when a.staff = 6 then 'EM'

...

sure it's fairly easy; adding a user has three things you need to do:

1. Add a login.

2. Add a user to that login

3.decide what rights they get.

Here is a script...