Whoa, that worked great!  Exactly what I was trying to do - thank you very much!!

Thanks for all of the input - it's been most enlightening.  I was particuarly interested by timingskey's comment about defragging while SQL was up and running.  I hadn't thought that would...

From the reading I've done today I believe that the DBCC REINDEX defrags the logical database structure, but does nothing about the physical makeup of the file(s).

I have the window...

I was considering running on the DB drive because a defrag analysis report shows at least one of the database is in 27 fragments.  I'm supposing that having it in...

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm trying to do - thank you!  I will check out sp_helprotect.

For what it's worth, this is what I ended up with:

print 'Total number of incoming SMTP messages for ' + convert(char(10), getdate()-1,121)

select count(*) from

WHERE convert(char(10), [datetime],121) LIKE convert(char(10), getdate()-1,121)

 

 

Hmm.  Well the following query works, and returns all the records created yesterday... but I don't know if it's the most efficient way to do it...?

select count(*) from

WHERE [datetime]...

Thank you Michel - the select statement you suggested gives me exactly what I asked for - the date. But apparently what I asked for and what I need are...