Good points.  As for seeing it in other posts you might from now on.  As you said I'm very aware of the numbers table but it had never occured to...

As I already said, even with only 1000 rows in the base table, the server will have to process up to 1 000 000 rows.  That's why I'll often preffer...

What are the columns that uniquelly identify the row (need some sort of tie breaker for this code)?

Can you add an identity column (teporary measure) to that table?

Wow that's a nice new approach.

The only downside I can see is that the 2nd id must have an unbroken sequence to make this work... and be some sort of...

PS... you obviously have to use a SP to run this .

The code to make the equivalent in a view would really kill the...

USE MASTER

GO

CREATE TABLE #Work (ID INT, Name SysName, colid smallint, rowid smallint)

INSERT INTO #Work (ID, Name, colid)

SELECT ID, Name, Colid FROM dbo.SysColumns ORDER BY ID, Colid

DECLARE @rowid AS INT

DECLARE @LastID...

Any auditing done on that table, either in another table or a lastupdateDate column?

What process is it doing exactly? Maybe you can check for traces in other tables (like a flag set to X value).

Because I doubt that you can have access to...

Why do you need to do that server side?  It's very easy to do that with a reporting tool or in any other languages.

It can be done server side but...

Is the Seq# permanent in the table or just in a select.

How much data are you talking about (rows).

On the very same lines.  The DIFFERENCE() function was written for stuff like that.  It's worth a look in your case.

"The second one reads "Mustang for sale: $100.000.  5% Discount if you pay with dimes".  My point is that the "Why would I want to?" part can have a lot...

select a.* from tbl_a a inner join tbl_b b on REPLACE(a_id, 'LINK_', '') = b.b_id

The real reason behind this is that most of the time 95%+, then cursor based approach is gonna be slower, sometimes exponentially slower (if cursor inside a cursor) than the...

What is in the actual data?

The prefix 'link_'

or an actual dynamic [web page] link?

Some actual sample data would greatly help us generate the adequate solution.