No I think that is correct. But like I said it does sound strange in general that these (and linked servers) should execute a proc twice. But unfortunately I am...

What I meant is that some people do not want to write any logic outside of a stored procedure and instead create huge stored procedures that they call from an...

And if you really need to see the columns in a specific order, why not create a view that 'changes' the order? Then use that to look at the data.

Since the data is stored on disk SQL Server needs to know which column is where. If you change in syscolumns it will get completely screwed up.

Can you not live...

How can this be done without dropping the table..?

You cannot. And like I said in a similar thread the other day, you should not care about the order of columns...

Hm, never heard about that. I have not used linked servers a lot so I could be wrong, but it does sound very strange. But how about OPENDATASOURCE or OPENROWSET...

Why? Sure, I agree that stored procedures have many benefits and I usually use them myself, but there is nothing inherently wrong with not using them. On the contrary, overuse...

And to add on, in SQL Server 2005 you only see objects you have permissions for regardless of which way you use.

Can you not simply use OPENDATASOURCE or OPENROWSET instead? I am just guessing here but you should be able to create an OLE DB provider for ODBC using your DSN...

Kapil, even though this probably works for you, please take the time to read the excellent article Ray referred to. You are doing something that is usually not the right...

The ordering of columns in tables (or sets in general) is a flaw in SQL and one of the reasons it is not truly relational. Don't reinforce the problem by...

So it won't necessarily issue a checkpoint when the log is 70% full.

Actually, if the database is in simple recovery mode and the database is in log truncate mode, it...

Joe Chang has written a couple of fairly advanced articles where he discuss costs (amongst other things). Take a look at the SQL Server Performance site, or just google it....

TRUNCATE table is non-logged; besides housekeeping of space allocated.

No, like I wrote, TRUNCATE is minimally-logged. It logs which pages are deallocated, instead of deleting each row and logging each operation....

Yes, that is usually my choice as well, and the other alternative is a left join filtering the nulls. Test which one works best for your situation. Of course SQL...