i inherited this database, if I were designing it myself I would have used two fields both being decimals... but this is an ETL so what I got I got

If I were doing this one at a time like the below, where could I use the REPLACE that would work with a series like below?:

UPDATE dbo.List with (ROWLOCK) SET...

Yes... I can see now where Cross Tabs are more versatile... e.g. finding averages like below (and I'm sure there's a better way to write this):

SELECT SalesPerson,

...

Of course to further take advantage of the above we could add a totalling function:

SELECT SalesPerson, COALESCE([Oranges],0) AS Oranges,

...

This works also from the article you attached... again, Thanks!

SELECT SalesPerson, COALESCE([Oranges],0) AS Oranges,

...

Thanks for the help and the directing me towards a temp table solution... one twist - a new form of data:

create table dbo.names (Place varchar(50));

insert into dbo.names ( Place) values...

I finally got it to work with PARTITION BY:

SELECT DISTINCT

L.[ResourceID]

,T.[ClassName]

,T.[SystemName]...

Actually I'm trying to have a count of specific values resulting in the concatenated field... typical data in this fiild looks like this and I've added the totals and quotes...