Ok, it doesn't make a difference which way to use, I didn't say it will. I only think that the way I prefer,...

I usually use IF EXISTS (SELECT TOP 1 NULL FROM atable WHERE ...)

Thus, I ensure that the minimum work is done on the server, since it is only necessary to...

Hi Neil,

Does any of the SQLs involved use ORDER BY ?

Can you rename the column back to its old name and gather execution plan ?

A simple comparation of execution plans...

UNION ALL performs better than UNION, since the merge join is avoided, and SQL Server uses CONCATENATION instead. Significant differences can be noticed for large tables only. For example, on...

According to the symptoms, I would do some or all of the following:

1. Reduce the number of triggers and replace them with stored procedures. I don't know the exact application...

I would reconsider the table design. If I understood the explanation correctly,  the groupMembers field contains a comma-separated  list of employee IDs. This design violates Codd's normalization rules. A better...

Ok, I agree that SQL Server scans the index to avoid full table scan and reduce the number of pages read in memory. But, there is a significant performance benefit...

If those two columns are the leading portion of the three-column composite index, then the optimizer should use the index while executing the query.

Regards,

Goce Smilevski.

The same behavior with date/time values and occurs in Delphi, too. If you try to read the value of a field/parameter using the AsDateTime property and the underlying value is...

In which form do you want to summarize the text values ? Comma-separated, for example ? Give some more information about the form of the result set you want to...

As far as I know, ORACLE dump files can be read by the ORACLE IMPORT utility only. ORACLE documentation strongly recommends NOT to use any utility other than IMPORT to...

Hi,

A typical "best practice" advice is to avoid using dynamic SQL when it is possible to solve the problem by some other technique. If you really have to use it,...

If the server is MS SQL 2000, this UDF may help:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.udfConcatenate_Claimant_Names (@case_number int)

  RETURNS varchar(1000)

AS

BEGIN

  DECLARE @ret_val varchar(1000)

  SET @ret_val = ''

  SELECT

    @ret_val = CASE @ret_val

                 WHEN...

The question is a little bit confusing . If ALL FIELDS should be checked for 'x' as a first character, then the WHERE condition should...

Several years ago I worked with ORACLE database, and I learned one thing: indexes are not always the best solution. Depending on the selectivity of indexed columns, there are cases...