Whole query would be useful.

It could be anything.

For example, implicit conversion. Some DECIMAL value may be 0 but being converted to, say, real becomes zero. Or other way around.

So,...

Don't want even comment ISNULL approach.

To avoid accusations in harsh wording...

- False results;

- poor performance;

...

I believe it's something you can store in a table.

I don't think capacity of your disks is changed every day.

Once you update hardware just update numbers in the table.

Kenneth,

"Best" could be the only one. If it's the best.

There is even sarcastic proverb about "second best".

So, when I say "qualifying object names with dbo. is a best practice" I...

What did you try?

I use it everywhere and it works perfect.

Even better than I expected from it.

The only thing: there is an error in your code:

dbo.flightinfo.end_date = b.end_date

OR

(

dbo.flightinfo.end_date IS NULL AND b.end_date IS...

Don't tell me about SQL Server Management Studio. I did not see application that crappy for a long time.

For your information. I just run you code on my server, then...

set @sql_stmt = 'ALTER TABLE ' + @table_name + ' drop COLUMN ' + @field_name + ' SER @ErrNo = @@ERROR '

Declare @Error int

exec sp_executesql @sql_stmt, N'@ErrNo int OUTPUT',...

Another good reason to use square brackets:

DECLARE @sql AS nVARCHAR(4000)

SET @sql = 'SELECT WHATEVER FROM ' + QUOTENAME(@ObjectName)

EXEC (@SQL)

Which UI are you talking about?

EM?

So, that just means that this particular application does have limitations for working with object names. Its editor removes unsupported characters.

But it's an application failure....

To stop discussion "Are there best practices at all" I may bring an example of truly best practice:

Always qualify names of objects owned by database owner with "dbo".

Do you know...

Sorry, David, you failed to prove validity of Kenneth's example.

> trying to DROP it through the UI won't work so well

Of course, if you using bad SQL syntax for...

> Noone has said that anything on the past pages has been 'wrong'

I said.

You definition of your habits as "best practice" is wrong.

Period.

> It's very similar to...

Don't be concious.

In VERY many cases using of temporary table takes much less resources than single script.

Look at execution plans of your queries. Every "hash join" you see in there...

David,

how do you know if someone have added some spaces to the beginning of LastName on accident or it was intentional?

Data is data. You should not modify it unless modifications...