Sorry about that - I should know better than to leave my replies strewn with Latin phrases.

Ad hoc means "for a specific purpose" - I meant it literally - it is...

SQL Server is a database platform, not a GUI tool.

Access is both a GUI tool and a database platform - it stores, processes and presents data.

To use SQL Server in a...

Could you create a distinct view and run your query against that?

If not, please mention what other restrictions you have to work round.

Regards

Ah - I read that to mean the scheduled execution of a VB.NET app.

Can you specify the user / password in the OLEDB connection string and use that to connect to SQL Server and then just EXEC the stored proc?

Maybe try initialising @variable before the conditions to get rid of possible NULL issues.  Eg

set @variable = ''

if not exists (select * from table where id = 1)

  begin

    set @variable...

I don't like it, but a combination of a trigger and xp_cmdshell will probably help you get there.

Why do you need to do this?  (There may be another way.)

Your first solution looks fine to me, but this will find the character position of the (first occurrence of) space

declare @str varchar(50), @pos int

set @str = '4520-169 FEIRA'

set @pos =...

You need to ensure that SQL Server Agent is running under an account that has access to the network drive you are trying to access.  To check this, from Enterprise...

Dinesh - I probably will not know the answer to this question, but I'm sure that it will help others who do to work out what the problem is if...

A boxer, perhaps?

OK, good point.

Here's one that should work:

select t.transactionnumber

from tbl t

join (select t.transactionnumber from tbl t where t.itemid = 'mouse') t1

on t.transactionnumber = t1.transactionnumber

join (select t.transactionnumber from tbl t where t.itemid =...

Are there any Scheduled Tasks on the server that may be running these jobs?

There will be other guys on this forum who have better experience with this than I (I've never had anything like that many servers to look after), but one way...

Do you have network and admin access to all of the servers?