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...

> I should tell you that I don't use the square brackets on everything... my "personal preference" is to avoid names with special characters simply because I hate typing the...

Search this forum for "split function".

Pick one you like the most and convert your @IDPARAM to temp table.

Then you can get rid of dynamic SQL:

UPDATE D

SET

RETURNED = 1,

RETURNED_DATE = GETDATE(),

RETURNED_BY...

It's better to do it in function.

Search this forum for "concatenate" and choose one of functions posted here.

> Some other folks mentioned language, which I agree is something very important.

I don't see any language related problems here.

So, let's cut the crap.

> Oh, well.. To be...

Did you try to compare it to performance of a query on properly designed tables?

Wrong use of quotes.

Here's what you need to fix:

... left(c.coursenumber,3)+'.'+right(c.coursenumber,3)+' '+replace(c.coursetitle, ' '' ', ' '''' ') as CourseTitle, ...

And

TRUNCATE TABLE tmpCourseNumbers

is much more effective than

delete from tmpCourseNumbers

1. It's you who initiated this fall. Noone was trying turn to personal points before you.

2. Your scenario is rubbish.

If name can be created it can be used -...

Probably space in studentmaster .orderset_sys

Sorry, I missed that link to SP text on 1st page.

There are too many flaws in that procedure.

For example, if table contains columns "Country" and "CountryCode" and "Country" is not...

... THEN ISNULL(St.StateDescription, up.propertyValue) END ...

... created by a trigger on that table.

You need only to have column with unique index on it for function names.

This will allow you to see if your internal formula...

> kind of degeneration these discussions can fall into.

So, please don't initiate that fall.

> Did I use a space? a space plus back-space plus space?

I hope you can explain how...

I believe you did not even try my suggestion.

You cannot achieve anything while you stick with loops.

> Best practice #1:

> Always use objectnames that *don't* have to use square brackets in order to not crash your code []

You cannot always follow this rule.

As you said: it...