Agile development is all about recognizing you won't get it perfect the first time, and the time and effort wasted on waterfall style high ceremony up front design and documentation...

Thanks Matt, for taking the time to reply with such a complete example. I studied and learned from your approach, but I'm not sure what is to be gained...

My fear in using global ##temp tables was that multiple users could trip over each over. Is that unfounded?

I think you can use:

insert into TableA

(user_id, fname, lname)

select 'ajones','ANN','JONES'

Where user_id <> 'ajones'

(Something of a moot no-op statement, but I assume your requirements have been simplified.)

or use an EXCEPT statement...

It had me stumped! That might be a good interview question. (I'd suggest an Obfuscated SQL contest, but too much SQL falls into that category naturally.)

The cowards way out, when you can, is to simply add (and later discard) top rows containing text to keep Excel from incorrect assumptions about the rest of the row...

Very nice Derek!

Getting the list might be a good use of the custom reports option, although I don't recall if the report gets any indication of the object from which...

As I'm sure you know, all SQL Server Objects support extended properties; I try (with only modest success) to define and populate a "description" property (and others as desired) to...

I have reached the conclusion (possibly unjustified) that splitting a table into history v. current is usually a bad idea, and creates problems like being unable to do a complete...

While I would hardly consider omitting the "=true" a shortcut, perhaps I can be accused of over generalizing. T-SQL is the first language that I recall that did not allow...

Interesting. In fact, in Access 2003 this query (where [isDate] is a check box field):

SELECT [Elems - CPMIS].Name, [Elems - CPMIS].Typ

FROM [Elems - CPMIS]

WHERE IsDate;

works fine.

But the Designer...

You can say field = true, but it is redundant. Field is either true, false, or null; in which case a test against true simply returns the value of the...

Or cleaner, since MS Access recognizes Booleans (unlike SQL Server), simply say "where field". (Where takes a Boolean, and field (displayed with check boxes) is a Boolean.)

From...

For sure, but the big question is why is there such a big difference between the two call styles? (I have since discovered that the reference to CURRENT_TIMESTAMP in the...

Same topic (http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/FindPost424410.aspx), but I don't see anywhere the function is calling itself. You may have found the key, but I am still missing it. The table returning...