http://beyondrelational.com/quiz/sqlserver/general/2010/default.aspx is having a whole month of difficult challenges beyond the scope of writing queries.

He was talking about getting all sorts of formats as inputs from the front end which is why I suggested he use the front end to control the input. This...

There are plenty of people here that are willing and able to help however your question does not explain what you want clearly.

Please see this link[/url] for an example...

Why not change the front end to get a standardized format? something like using a calendar control to get dates instead of a textbox?

Kind of vague what you want for results but...

select count(distinct empNo) from TotalDays group by empNo having SUM(totalWorkingDays) = 0

select COUNT(empNo) from TotalDays where atnDate = '8/1/2010' and totalWorkingDays =...

Sacheen (10/18/2010)

I have written one parameterized query which looks like below -

select *

from table

where Column1 = Case when @parameter1 is NULL then Column1 else @parameter1 end

and...

Better yet to use set based logic and do away with the looping/cursor logic all together. There of course is not a catch all way to convert all looping/cursor logic...

What changes after it exceeds 8,000 characters is how sql stores it internally. From the developer side there is no change required. SQL looks at the field and knows how...

That was my point. The OP said his data is over 8,000 in length. 🙂

Do be careful, there can be HUGE performance losses when converting to nvarchar(max) on large amount of data.

nvarchar(max) will allow for the length to be pretty much as large as it needs.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186939%28v=SQL.90%29.aspx

It sounds like in your example the duplication is either 100% or 75%. Obviously it is not 25%. That would indicate that of the 4 records only one of them...

Thank you for posting create table scripts and making this pretty easy. I am not sure what you are having problems with though.

I ran the following code and it worked...

I too think the information presented is useful but the question was intentionally trying to make as many people as possible miss it. The purpose of the QOTD was met...

My guess is that your table does not have the columns that is says it can't find.

Invalid column name 'EmpNo'.

Invalid column name 'Totalhours'.