that's what i get for rushing out an answer;

David Burrows, as usual, is correct.

NOT Exists...

the fields are TABLE_NAME and COLUMN_NAMe...with underscores;

select * from information_schema.columns where table_name='' and column_name=''

i saw one guy said when he re-installed the last service pack for sql server, it fixed his machine;

but more importantly, it looks like some security setting that was added...

information_schema views are the most correct way to do it;

IF EXISTS(select * from information_schema.columns where tablename='programversion' and columnname=@col )

BEGIN

SET @sql = 'ALTER TABLE [programversion]  ADD [' +...

you can change the default location for all the VS stuff; it is stored under the registry under the following key(s): Visual Studio 2003 is 7.1, and 2005 has a...

i do that kind of import a lot...probably better ways to do it, but this works really well for me;

the example below is typical of what I use...the table "FINAL_LAYOUT"...

SQL 2000 behaved differently than 2005; in 2000, from a logical point of view, if they can read and write a table, they must be able see it's structure as...

this is what is known as a cross tab query; you are converting rows to columns. you can search for cross tab or pivot to find more examples:

here's an example...

the equivilent of the First() function is SELECT TOP 1 COLUMNNAME from sometable order by COLUMNNAME ;

the TOP function can give you the top 10 like david letterman, or return...

the BULK INSERT function in SQL is the most effecient. If you know the layout of the file will always be the same, and the data rows are the differences,...

sql server agent must be started in order for jobs to execute...is it running? on a laptop, you often do not turn on that service...

if you go to Enterprise manager...

again, your timing is off: if you stop the SQl server service, you will see something like this in the events log:

17148 :SQL Server is terminating due to 'stop'...

turning statistics off is only good if you have a job to update the statistics manually. if statistics go out of date, execution plans can become outdated and have the...

I think your logic is backwards.... if the sql server is going down or, is already down/offline, you wouldn't be able to backup the databases...well...because the server must be up...

obviously there is an implied order somewhere, otherwise you would not want them in 3,1,2 order...is there a datetime field, or the order of insert (based on an identity field?)...

an FYI that you already know most likely: programatically automating excel is slow, and it is notoriously difficult to close the last excel object...so if you run task manager, it...