Paul & Seth -- Thanks so much for your help!

Paul White NZ (5/3/2010)

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Goldie Graber (5/3/2010)

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Out of curiosity, what is the difference between a UDF that accesses data and a trigger that accesses data? Won't the trigger also get called...

Paul White NZ (5/1/2010)

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Garadin (4/30/2010)

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I'll admit that I scanned this, but I didn't see anyone mention a UDF as the default constraint on the column that does a lookup for...

Thanks for your help.

This solution won't work for me, I have multiple columns with these requirements and that would cause the trigger to be very complex.

:hehe::hehe:

Lowell (4/28/2010)

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but your @Student table does not allow nulls for the lunch; that is the constraint failure;:

,LunchPeriod INT DEFAULT(4) ...

Lowell (4/28/2010)

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i think i had to change my data; you had one class with a null lunch:

SELECT '10-B', NULL

which i changed so it would work; i was kind of...

sturner (4/28/2010)

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Then there are two other options:

1) check for null and use a 3 value insert statement if it is null, else insert 4 values.

2) select the column default value...

I can't get this to work? When I...

I'm looking for a way to do it without hard-coding the column defaults.

This way, if the column default changes, the new records would be correct.

Thanks for the excellent article! Clear and concise!

Providing sample code with extra examples was a perfect way to provide more information, without cluttering the main article.

I've never actually used APPLY...

lmu92 (3/15/2010)

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Something like this?

DECLARE @OutlineNumber VARCHAR(1000)

SET @OutlineNumber= '.I.A.1.b.'

SELECT STUFF(SUBSTRING(@OutlineNumber,1,CHARINDEX('.',@OutlineNumber,N+1)),1,1,'')

FROM dbo.Tally

WHERE N < LEN(@OutlineNumber)

AND SUBSTRING(@OutlineNumber,N,1) = '.'

The variable needs to have a...

Thanks to both of you for your help!

Paul, why do you say your second query is better?

Thanks for the excellent article!

You did a terrific job explaining a complex topic in simple terms.

The graphical explanations were also very helpful.

I will be passing this one on as...

Thanks for your help.

I will do the performance testing when I have some free time, and post the results up here.