Nice to see you are getting your memory back Sue .

That works for me!

Select 'Demo' AS "Strange column < name"

Nothing changed.  You still have to use dynamic sql to do this.  But then again you shouldn't need dynamic sql.  So what do you need to do???

PS, it can be done without #temp tables or table variables if need be... but performance wise and code readability wise, I wouldn't recommend it

I don't have time to code it nor do I have a server to test it so I'll just give you the logic and then you should be able to...

Not 100% sure.  But I'm 99.999999999999% sure it can't be done at the moment or ever for that matter.

What problem are you trying to solve with this solution?

That won't work. You will always get the same 5 jokes for each category.  Their final presentation order will change each time but that's it.  If you need to change...

That would correct the error, but I can't test the query to make sure it works :

SELECT  JokeID,

JokeCatID,

JokeTitle,

JokeDesc,

UserID

from (

SELECT DISTINCT top 5 JokeID,

JokeCatID,

JokeTitle,

JokeDesc,

UserIDFROM jokes

WHERE JokeCatID = SomeNumber

ORDER BY NEWID()...

What if you want to set the value to null?

What return value? There's no return value set in that code so it will always be 0!

Maybe you should start a new thread with a more defined question if you...

Yup or in a covering index... as in my exemple!

I already did something like this for Access.  Looping through the forms collection I fetched the rowsource.  From that I could compare for object usage.  Maybe you can write something...

Depends on the queries you hit the table with...

It can be usefull if you do something like :

Select OrderID, SUM(LinePrice) AS TotalBeforeTaxes FROM OrdersDetails WHERE OrderID BETWEEN 100 AND 200 GROUP...

No you pretty much have it.  The only change I can offer is to remove the insert statement.

SELECT  O.ObservationTypeId,

 O.ObservationDate,

 O.Source,

 O.Status,

 O.Report

FROM PM_Observation O

INNER JOIN 

(

SELECT  O.ObservationTypeId, MAX(O.ObservationDate) AS ObservationDate

FROM PM_Observation O  

WHERE O.PatientId...

6-18 months back.  Someone posted almost the same exact question.  I posted the same solution but using a update / cross join statement instead.  And I clearly remember the loop...