Don't see any need for the "IF" at the start of the function.  I wrote an almost identical function for this purpose but with just the WHILE.

To check for existence of a column, don't think you need to do a system table query at all, just use a built-in SQL function:

IF COL_LENGTH ('tableName', 'columnName') IS NULL

    --column...

DECLARE @v-2 VARCHAR(200)

SET @v-2 = 'http://www.google.com/intl/en/images/logo.gif'

SELECT SUBSTRING(@v, CHARINDEX('//', @v-2) + 2, CHARINDEX('/', @v-2, CHARINDEX('//', @v-2) + 2) - (CHARINDEX('//', @v-2) + 2))

--That will work for *any* string prior to the...

Something like this should perform *much* better

SELECT     a.procid, b.[ClientName] AS CName, b.[CompanyName], b.[CustRefNum] AS CRef,

                  b.[JobNumber] AS JNumber, --...,

                     b.[County] AS RCounty

FROM      ...

When you run code #1, it actually does seem to work, although I'm not exactly sure why it would.  Since punctuation falls within that range, it really shouldn't.  You can run...

I agree with Tim 100%.  The code suggested would not necessarily work and presumably would be less efficient than a not check.  Very frequently when the qod is a T-SQL...

I assumed that too and got it right, but why not make the question match the answer:

Bill needs to show the day of the week for today's date on a...

Silly premise for the question, since it would require that the highest sales always occur on the current day.  Just don't try rerunning the report

I think you can remove leading tab(s) directly within a SELECT, without any CASE or loop, for example:

DECLARE @tabPattern VARCHAR(8)

SET @tabPattern = '%[^' + CHAR(9) + ']%'

DECLARE @tabRemove VARCHAR(200)

SET @tabremove...

I would prefer simply:

CHECK(minit LIKE '[ A-Z]')

Why split it into two checks?

You do understand that multiple CASE conditions could be true for the same value and that a single value could be added to every total?

For example, if cas_lbs...