Don't see how you can do this w/o an ORDER BY, but it's trivial with one:

SELECT TOP 1 Name, SUM(Consumption) AS Total_Consumption

FROM tablename

GROUP BY Name

ORDER BY SUM(Consumption) DESC

Interesting code.

But can't use just do either of these:

DECLARE @result TABLE (value decimal(24, 4))

INSERT INTO @result

EXEC('SELECT 3.0 / 4 + 3.2')

SELECT * FROM @result

Or:

DECLARE @value decimal(24, 4)

EXEC sp_executesql N'SELECT @value...

Try something like:

REPLACE(REPLACE(column, CHAR(13), ''), CHAR(10), '')

Of course, CHAR(13) = cr, CHAR(10) = lf

Ah, you mean exactly as I stated in the initial comment to your q? 🙂

I don't think you have to do all that. Just change the first SELECT ... INTO statement:

...

PTS_QA_CE = CAST(Null AS decimal(10, 2)),

...

Btw, don't use decimal(10, 2) unless you really...

Instead of a "CROSS JOIN" on the tally table, use an INNER JOIN, specifying the WHERE conditions relating to tally values as ON conditions instead.

Quite true. A valid point.

3 of them are exactly the same function. Unfortunately, I...

Technically, I think the first calc can be reduced ever so slightly 🙂 :

DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, GETDATE()), -1) AS LastDayOfLastMonth

I think you can do that more easily, like so:

SELECT SUBSTRING(col1, (CHARINDEX('Website is', col1) + 11),

CHARINDEX(' because', col1, (CHARINDEX('Website is', col1) + 11)) -

...

You're pulling data from the comma forward, so you need a leading comma as well as a trailing one.

Yes, but I think someone made that point that legally in some jurisdictions, a person with...

It's not even guaranteed to be unique, which would be a bigger problem .

Use EXIST with OR between to check the other tables; check the most likely table...

Hmm, but if a user bulk inserts several rows at once, many of them could get the same datetime value (at least if we're talking about std datetime accuracy to...

I agree; one single, keyed INSERT should not take that long.

(As an aside, though, that is a fairly long row (in bytes). If you do not update rows after...