To preempt another potential whoops (it got me once) :

A programmer may decide to circumvent the date format issues by holding dates as Julian day numbers. Unfortunately, SQL Server...

These offer another solution that lets you keep the same column name :

select top 5

o.orderid

, o.customerid

, CONVERT(char(10), o.requireddate, 101) as requireddate

from orders o

order by convert(char(10), o.requireddate, 120) desc

or...

Thanks, you're right - sort of. It happens in this case but it works fine with the brackets if you take out the ORDER BY clause.

Checking BOL (which I...

A couple of weeks ago. Perhaps I imagined it but if he didn't, he should have!

Once again, thanks very much. To echo Steve Jones, you deserve all those points.

Thanks for the instant response!

I had a clustered key on the table that I'm inserting to so as to speed later queries and included the ORDER BY so that records...

My understanding is that the main problem is not temp tables as such but SELECT INTO #temp because that takes locks on the tempdb system tables while the select is...

It seems too obvious and probably just the way you typed the post but your sample queries are using different datetime formats.

Remi,

Thanks for the correction - that could have been embarrassing!

Remi,

To refine your comment on temp tables, my understanding is :

## are global to the connection

# are local to the stored procedure in which they are created.

I need to play...

The temporary table method, I believe, only works when calling from another stored procedure; not from an application via ADODB, etc. However, updating a table directly by modifying a...

You could try using psychology :

Create a job to run overnight that looks for anything created as other than dbo and e-mails the creator with a suitable message. They...

I have experienced this - where a procedure ran fine on a single processor development server but slowed to a crawl on a multiprocessor production server. Restricting it to...

One thought - if a software vendor is referring to lots of databases, is it his software that is using them all? If so and its bad design, perhaps...

Remi,

Apologies. I just noted that I effectively repeated your answer. I must have been asleep not to notice! No plagiarism intended.