Were the first and third choices deliberately identical?

SQLNCLI11 is only compatible back to SQL 2005. You could try creating a linked server using and ODBC data source and use the DSN in the linked server with...

Just to be sure, when you say "VSS", are you good folks talking about "Visual Source Safe"?

Probably Volume Shadow Copy Service? Though I didn't know it left debris.

And probably homework.

2008 introduced assignment of variable in declare statement.

1. Please format your code so it doesn't scroll horizontally out-of-sight for several furlongs. 🙂
2. You have no trigger and did a direct update to dbo.store_customers, not watermarktable, and did...

A case statement should work if there aren't too many variations -- e.g., something like

UPDATE table1 
SET FK_category = CASE WHEN name1='John' and name2='Doe' THEN 1000 
...

I suspect this line should use IIF like the others, shouldn't it?

-SUM(IF(Fields!strType.Value="Rent_Tax",Fields!intDT.Value,0))

Pictures don't provide any detail to analyze and aren't very useful.

Attaching an actual execution plan, or posting a link to actual plan on PasteThePlan would be much more useful.

If they were bits, you could use the NOT operator (~) -- i.e.,

UPDATE dbo.table_name SET column = ~column

If all you're going to do is store Lat/Long pairs, and you're NEVER going to do any spatial calculations in SQL Server (going to let client or other service handle...

Oh, right, sorry. Yes, I do see that more subtle highlighting on the first cell.

If you don't want that, then O don't know any way short of exporting to Excel...

What version of SSMS? I'm using 18.12.1, and it doesn't select any cell by default -- I have to have clicked on it first.

This question appears to be a continuation/extension of this one.

To clarify, we are talking about running out of file space for the log files (ldf) and not the backups, correct? If so, then more frequent log backups could help...