Am I right in assuming you want to move all columns to the left as far as possible where the target column is not null?

If so you will want to...

See http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1433051-391-1.aspx#bm1433101 for suggestions

What logic are you using to determine the value of the second column?

I can guess of a few - my guesses can be wrong though.

What would the next stage up from VLDB be - BHDB*?

*Bloody huge database

Temp db full as in occupies all the available disk space? How long has this been the case - as you know temp db does fluctuate in size during normal...

Much of the information you need is here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms143432(v=sql.105).aspx. Although a lot of this would be dependant on if your hardware could cope with it.

Thanks for the question - good reminder of the basics.

It appears that quite a few here needed reminding of the differences - 40% wrong at the moment.

I wonder how...

The only way I am aware of is from a backup

You want to run something along the lines of:-

select

[Name],

count(ID)

from

tablename

group by [Name]

Am I mis-reading the data or...

Left inner join ?

When I try to run left inner join I get :-

Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 2

Incorrect syntax near...

What is the query you are using at present?

You have an error in your query.

Please re-read my sample query and the link I posted - you might see the error then.

select cola1,cola2,colb1,colb2 from tablea left outer join tableb on cola1 = colb1 where colb1 is null

Sample query.

Two points:-

This could be more accurate if you could provide table structure (see first...

You need join your tables with a left join. This will shows which records are in one table but not in the other.

datwungai (3/19/2013)

It's a former DBA that hates me because unlike him, I take my job seriously and won't give him sa permissions. He thinks...