Sometimes you need to allow null in order to simplify the design of the database or to prevent large amounts of wasted data. In this case employees either belong to...

Yes of course, that is the problem.

The assignment when it's null is incorrect. I can see the error now.

Thanks so much.

Doug

Not quite certain what you mean.

The insert statement is just as shown in the original example.

For that field: DeptID = null

Doug

But with exactly the same insert statement except DeptID equal to a valid record in the Departments table, the insert succeeds.

Doug

Thanks very much for your reply.

Unfortunately I have tried this but there is no change.

Does anyone know if there is a way to check the data or know what has...

The answer was in my message Posted 3/2/2005 6:05:00 PM. That worked for me and included everything.

Doug

I called Microsoft's local office and they've put me in touch with their distributor who sells it for $55, just a little more that the US price. So I should...

Thanks so much for all your help.

The table variable and a few other minor bugs were the last errors to cure and now my very first piece of T-SQL...

I really do thank you so much for all your help, but since I don't quite understand your last reply I think I may have misled you again in waht...

Thanks for that. I'm trying to find out locally how to get a copy as I don't live in the States.

Hope you don't mind if I ask another question.

In your...

Wow! that's really neat. Since this is a fairly new project I'm certainly considering moving it up to SQL2005. Is there a cheap developer edition I can get to play...

I'm stuck with SQL7 at the moment, so many thanks for all your help.

Much appreciated.

Doug

Oh brilliant !!

That's it. Great stuff. I didn't think of using isnull in the order by line.

Thanks for your help. It's much appreciated.

Cheers,

Doug

Many thanks for your reply.

This returns the sub-categories sorted by ID within each main category, and with the main categories in ID number order, but I need to have both...

That's very helpful. Thanks so much.

Doug