Let me correct myself: in sql 2005 and earlier the value would be truncated, from 2008 the function will return null if the input is over 128 characters loing.

Be warned though that the parameter and return type of quotename() is sysname, i.e. any value you put...

You seem to be in a real hurry for an answer, but maybe you should reread your question before becoming aggitated. What do you mean to say with "filter the...

Excellent! Looking forward for it. And thanks a lot for the series.

Yes, you're right. Forgot about that. It's just for setting up the sample data, the union will still behave the same given the same data. i.e. if you insert the...

aschaffer (3/14/2012)

Ok then. Why don't you approach the problem from the other end: if finding the 'holes' in your large set of table A records is the issue, why not keep...

And what about this? I've often seen left outer join with a "is null" check on (one of) the key columns of the right table in the where clause outperform...

Looking forward for your article on XML DML! I've tried many things, but so far I failed to find any useful patterns to use the .modify() method.

My attempts so far...

Yet another tip: the use of OPENROWSET requires permissions many admins will not allow end-users to have on production machines as it opens up many security holes. There is however...

Nice sum up of the various possibilities indeed.

A remark: though I understand you had to keep each section brief because you wanted to cover all topics, I think you could...

L' Eomot Inversé (3/9/2012)

Now there's maybe a problem with the explanation adopted as the result of that discussion: is it...

The advantage of a global temp table is that you can read/write it from another process. The disadvantage is that you can only have one global temp table with the...

The 1st parameter to sp_executesql contains the T-SQL text you need executed. This text may contain any number of variables, in any order and the same parameter may be used...

If you create a view over the both tables, having columns ID and E1 through E12 you can insert into both tables using 1 insert statement. Such a view is...