Interesting... Thanks Gail

I want to Correct myself....

I just tested this again and even explicit conversion gives the result as in Jeffs first example. I played some more and it appears that...

Jeff, I think your example is somewhat misleading...

In the first query SQL converts all the inputs into the most datatype of highest precedence possible, i.e Binary, which is always Numeric.

In...

nChar() is Fixed length

and nVarChar is variable length.

In practice, the disk space used is

nChar(5) => will always use 12 Bytes ( 2 *n ) +2

nVarChar(5) = > uses 3...

I second Jeffs sentiments. I had to do this aswell, and without management support DB standards get nowhere. Especially in the face of non DB developers and Administrators...

If you had a Date you could also use

Declare @Date int

Set @Date = getDate()

Select Case Datepart( year, @Date ) % 4

when 0 Then 1

...

Sorry for posting the whole script again. some minor changes required but the code below gives the required result.

I changed the script to

1. Take All codes into Account...

No problem with the delay. I just wanted to know if it has solved your problem...I will check the scenario where it gives the incorrect answer

A data sample ( real or fictional) would help to understand the problem and therefore solve the problem

In my experience when dealing with dates it is best to be explicit about the format. Although format 112 (ISO) is nice, I Have found that format 120 (ODBC...

This should be what you are looking for

If Exists(

---Check if such a row exists

Select top 1 * From Tab where Col is...

This should be what you are looking for

If Exists(

Select top 1 * From Tab where Col is Null

)

Begin

Raiserror( msg.......)

End

The solution to this is very much like a solution I posted earlier, but not without a row identifier as mentioned before.

You asking for standard Split functionality... There are many threads (and articles) on this site dealing with this)

A search on "split" should give you the result you want

Sorry I...

either one of the following does what you are asking. The Second query is marginally faster

Update Tgt

Set ColA = Src.ColA

From #MyTable as tgt

Left join(

Select

TgtID = t.CoID

,Src.*

, RowNum...