I was told there would be pie.  I want some pie.

Do you have any examples of this?  I'd be interested in seeing them.

You can create a work table, and have your procedure call populate the work table.  Another job that runs on a schedule reads the work table and performs whatever work...

I'm pretty sure that the @@identity value is connection-specific, so I don't think that it can be changed in the middle of a statement that doesn't preform an insert.

I'm not...

I doesnt work that way.  Well, it works, but you are just selecting the scalar value for each row of the table. 

Now, which one of the 24 million identical...

I think you could create a table of acceptable letters and join to the table or tables with the accented letters.  In your select, you will pick the column in...

Ninja,

I found something like that in a production system, selecting @@identity from SomeTable right after an insert.

I almost had to choke somebody.

The correct answer is none of the above.  You aren't going to build the disk system of a busy OLTP server for 1500 bucks.

tony,

Try comparing the execution plans for both methods from inside Query Analyzer. 

hmmm.  I'm not sure. I just remember the cause of the error message.  I'm not sure what the installer is going to do if some of the resources already exist...

"and it tells me that a virtual server of that name already exists on the network."

Oh boy, do I know the answer to that one.

The Cluster installer wants to register...

Here's from the BOL topic "Creating a Failover Cluster"

Elements of a Virtual Server

A virtual server contains:

• A combination of one or more disks in a Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS)...

And it looks like I was wrong about the resource groups.  Your admin needs to create the group.  It's been a while....  SQL server installer lets you pick a group...

Do we need a seperate resource group for each virtual server we wish to install on a cluster?

yes, aboslutely.

Where is the physical disk resource located?  Did you create a resource group and then the disk resource in that group?

I think you need to let the installer create the...