The top(1) protects from row expansion due to the inequality on date.  That was the part I wasn't getting.

If I'm understanding correctly there's a table with many status columns per userid.  When any of the statuses change a new record is inserted which duplicates the unchanged statuses.  Fyi,...

dotPeek could decompile the dll's if you'd like to see the source code.  It's free and there's no registration or email required to download and install it.

https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/download/

I agree with James one transaction would likely be a good idea.  To see how the trancount changes with successive trans/commits:

drop proc if exists temp_proc;
go
create proc temp_proc
as
begin
drop...

Something going on with your quotes.  The url should be in single quotes. There should be a quote before POST also.

Merge statements are good for "make these rows look like those rows" situations.  There are plenty of other uses too.  Unlike UPDATE, DELETE, etc. MERGE is not a single atomic...

You say you're looking for a "better solution" so could you please provide the current solution?  Can't say if something is better if we can't see what it's being compared...

Jonathan's is the most correct. Mine only mimics your demo output and it's 2012+.

/* test data */
drop table if exists #test_apps;
go
create table #test_apps(
  AppNumberint not null,
  Employeenvarchar(64) not null,
  Time_generatedatdatetime2 not null);
go

insert #test_apps(AppNumber, Employee, Time_generatedat) values
(143270137,'shiva', '2019-09-23...

Yes it's part of SSIS but honestly: I can make SQL Servers fly but creating C# Code which aswell flies on SQL Server is a completely different story therefore...

Ok, yeah that's right.  I was thinking of something else

"most recent" is the smallest date

Thank You.

Can i define player_name as an index?

How do i  add highscores to the table using pr_PutHighScoreList(stored procedure)

You can only appear on the high score list once, and only...

The ORDER BY entr_dt I think should be ascending.  Earlier is better?

update a
set
  revenue=revenue*isnull((tsr_run.rate/tsr_ship.rate),1)
from
  test_tableA a
 left join
  test_season_rate tsr_ship on a.itemnumber=tsr_ship.itemnumber
   and datepart(m, a.shipmentdate)=tsr_ship.season_month
 left join
  test_season_rate tsr_run on a.itemnumber=tsr_run.itemnumber
 ...