Unfortunately, a server cannot link to itself - at least, I couldn't get it to do it.

In Query Analyser, go to the menu Tools/Options Results tab and check the value for Maximum Characters per Column. This will limit any results returmed from a query.

A further thought occurred to me in the middle of the night (sad!) - If you have varchars or a clustered index (and perhaps in other circumstances) data is likely...

Presumably this is BLOB data. Does that make a difference?

Overwriting the data with random garbage (several times if you are that paranoid!) gets rid of it whether or not you then delete the record but the comments on transaction...

Thanks. That was it. It's the simple things ... .

ThomasH,

Thanks for your response - your solution works. Sorry, I missed your post at first because another had been added after it.

The speed (and quality) of responses in this...

I have rebooted the PC, restarted Query Analyser, loaded the script and hit the Run button. I still get the same error.

The problem presumably is that the parser sees...

Thanks for the prompt reply.

This is part of a stored procedure but it fails to compile giving this error. The temporary table does not exist. I have tried...

SELECT pj.vcFname, dt.noIDs

FROM tbl_Projects pj

JOIN

(SELECT fk_intprojectID,

COUNT(*) AS noIDs

FROM tbl_ProjectsResearchers

...

Oops!! Thanks.

There was a long thread on this topic recently. The concensus was that the most efficient way of stripping the time from a datetime value was :

DateAdd(d, 0, DateDiff(d,...

This VB code displays the Windows dialog that allows the user to select a server (the same as when you double-click on a .udl file) :

Dim...

As I am using SQL Server 7, I'll stick to my 4-table guidline, then.

My belief always has been that joining more than four tables at a time is likely to impact performance as well as maintainability - no evidence; just a belief! ...