lol, you two are funny. I post code that actually works and you keep talking to each other about how "it can't be done". ROFLOL.

Maybe Experts-Exchange? I did *a lot* of...

...other code same as before...

ELSE

BEGIN

--no previous case w/ judge found, so assign judge from existing round

IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT TOP 1 * FROM Round)...

I'll also add what I said before. The data is being inserted in the order of 09, 11, 01 and everyone is just getting lucky with the "sorted" order. It...

You could rephrase the query to avoid...

For a new case, the client and case parts work exactly as they do now.

[Note that my design currently means "no client, no case", that is, a case *must*...

CORRECTION:

Instead of:

CREATE INDEX Cases_IX_JudgeID ON Cases (JudgeID)

Should be:

CREATE INDEX Cases_IX_01 ON Cases (ClientID, JudgeID)

You should reorganize the table as soon as possible. You almost certainly created a large number of row-forwarding pointers by doubling the size of that many columns.

I suggest this something like this for the tables:

DROP TABLE Cases

DROP TABLE clients

DROP TABLE Judges

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Judges](

[JudgeID] [int] NOT NULL CONSTRAINT...

You have two different approaches you can take:

1) Leave the base Judge and Case tables alone; instead, create a separate table to control rounds. This is the method I...

OFF-TOPIC

So, how does your count method handle all the situations I've described?

It does NOT. It CANNOT. Your 'solution' only handles a pure vanilla situation. That's a college...

I think a separate judgeround table is a better design in this situation because it's more flexible.

Say one judge is ailing and the others agree to give him/her a limited...

You want to keep your judgeid as an INT, no need to use nvarchar for that.

Except for long-term archiving, you only need one case table that has both current and...

OFF-TOPIC

Don't...

No problem. I get that. The *first* thing you do for a case is check whether it qualifies as a transfer case. If it does, assign it...