Hi David,

I appreciate the concept but I have to disagree with the approach. We programmers can come up with a lot of "nice" solutions, but they don't always work in...

not a good question at all!

'nuf said.

Briliant!

to recap the "lesson", this is a use of a "double assignment" inside an UPDATE statement, with a CASE and a forced index.

I am sure I could use this technique in...

very nice!

notice the double assignment in the update.

Be aware that in future versions of SS, the TEXT data type will be REMOVED! see BOL topic "Using text and image Data" http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189574(SQL.90).aspx

Microsoft has introduced...