Well...I solved the problem but now I need help to understand WHY it didn't work and WHY it does work now...

The solution was to drop and recreate the tmpBIALDB table. ...

Thanks Gary, That looks like another good way.  Do I assume correctly that by using Collate I'm over-riding the default database sort order?  Is it required to use nvarchar instead...

Thanks David!  I figured there had to be an easy way.

Well, here's another way, but it's perhaps more convoluted than yours.  I think you're stuck with one of these or some other variant that breaks up that '83811'.  I don't think...

Thanks to all of you for your responses.  Here's what I've found out based on them:

1) It appears to be a bug of some sort or at least such a...

Thanks, both of you.  It makes sense now.  I was running a huge query that was in the middle of inserting 2 million rows of data.  It was probably nearly...

kokyan, That's exactly what I do on all my computers.  On the computer I started this thread for, it doesn't play a sound upon completion, which I why I'm asking if...

Yeah, it's strange.  I like the 'beep' since I often do long-running queries.  I like to know when they're finished w/o checking back...

here is another example:  I follow it with some tips.

--Make a temp table for the example

CREATE TABLE #Rate (
  From_City  varchar(50)
,  To_City    varchar(50)
,  Cost       int
)

--Insert some data
INSERT INTO #rate Values('Minneapolis',...

The main way I've accomplished this is through stored procedures that build dynamic SQL statements.  Build a temp table or table var with an IDENTITY column and a unique list of...

Thanks Jack,

As it turns out I'll be moving to SQL 2000 very soon now, so this will become useful almost immediately.  I'm running tests this week.

I have a couple more questions on this topic.  Essentially I'd like to be able to use existing stored procedures on the fly, joined to other data.  I already use...

For those of you who may have been following this thread:

Today I got to ask why stored procedures are "bad" for SQL Server applications.  First off, the stance was toned down quite...

Thanks for the quick reply fhanlon,

I do use the INSERT INTO method to good effect.  What I'm hoping for is something like SELECT...INTO that would generate the #tmp table at the...

Lost my reply just now...

Re: MUD DESC... mud is an abbreviation for Max Upload Date, the field in the subquery that gets the most...