I have his book on the 70-461 exam and it's very easy to read - hopefully this new one is the same!

Here's a query I wrote:

-- now the tricky bit...

Woo-hoo....you da man :cool:!!

Seriously though, many thanks for taking the trouble to go through my pain 🙂

I wonder why it'll work that way but not through the way you'd...

Yes, they're both using the 'sa' username and password.

There are no other expressions being used and as you can see in the screenshot, they're both OLE DB destinations.

Both connections in the connection manager have a type of OLEDB.

I don't know the answer to that one - it's what's in the dropdown list.

With the 'no-expression' everything is [] and in the expression version it's all quoted!

Very strange!

"Data Source="+ @[User::VarHQServer] + ";Initial Catalog="+ @[User::VarHQDatabase] +";User ID="+ @[User::VarHQUserName] +

";password="+ @[User::VarHQPassword] + ";Persist Security Info=True; Provider=SQLNCLI10.1;Auto Translate=False;"

I'm using SQL Server 2008

If I use a connection that doesn't have an expression I get this:

If I use an expression for the connectionstring I get these options:

One weird things is the icons used...

Sorted it - it was the compatibility level of the database - it was set to 80 but need to be at least 90.

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure dba_SearchCachedPlans, Line 27

Incorrect syntax near '.'.

Any ideas anyone? THe SQL looks good to me.