I agree working with dates from text files is not particularly great in SSIS but I have done the following in the past.

Set the text file connection manager to import...

Cheers Jacob, I look forward to the follow-up.

Good article, although every server based pagination sample I read seems to skip the fact that in almost every situation the "user" wants to know how many records there are...

Is it possible to split the data/indexes into different filegroups and perform separate filegroup backups each night ?

Nice article. Especially like the tip about the cost of opening the symmetric key. Not something I'd thought of before.

beath, you've highlighted the trade offs exactly so basically if you don't edit the packages frequently then I agree, MSDB is much neater, but if you find yourself requiring easy...

Scott,

sounds to me like you've already got most of the decisions on how to go about this sorted. I don't think you'll need to use OPENXML or SQLXML however...

Tekguy,

I've knocked up some demo xml (taking a guess at what your data looks like) and a query that gets the data you need.

HTH

DECLARE @xml xml
SET @xml = N'
<products>
<product_data>
<id>123</id>
<name>Product Number...

Although it's difficult to see from your post I assume you meant to say that it returns the result in the format

<price>120.00</price>

and you actually wanted just the value. In...

I've had this issue before and it was a problem with the DNS server setup on my local machine i.e. my local machine couldn't reach it's primary DNS.

Don't know if...

sean,

just tried the xml you sent by assigning it to a local variable and executing the following which worked fine

SELECT nref.value('status[1]', 'nvarchar(50)') STATUS,

nref.value('stockCode[1]', 'nvarchar(50)') STOCKCODE,

nref.value('barcode[1]', 'nvarchar(50)') BARCODE,

substring(nref.value('stockName[1]', 'nvarchar(50)'),5,150)+ ' '...

Can you post a small sample of the xml data your trying to convert ?

sean,

I'm not sure I understand your question, you already seem to have the syntax for returning a datetime from the document but here's my (simpler) example I used to test

DECLARE...

Colin,

My two penne'th worth. I have worked in companies where both approaches have been applied and my summary would be:

Many Databases

Pros

- easier/tighter control management of database security

- faster backup/restore...

satnam,

unfortunately not. this is where (IMHO) Microsoft doesn't adhere to the ansi standard which states "no two NULLs are equal" which you would think should allow you to permit...