Surely, the real answer here is : dont use varchars for datetime if you are going to select on them. Add datetime columns if necessary and populate them with...

Dates are stored internally as numbers (zero is 1 January 1900, then count days with time being the decimal part) so the comparison actually is on a number range (and,...

I assume that the TabID is not sequential, otherwise you just could use BETWEEN. Can you create a surrogate key that is sequential?

It would return the latest address onli if the ids were sequential and not GUIDs or something else horrible ... and there's no guarantee that the latest is the correct...

See http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=169&messageid=248544 which is another example of the same requirement.

A crude (untested) solution would be :

SELECT c.*, a.* FROM Contacts c

JOIN AddressTable a ON a.AddressID = c.PersonID JOIN

(SELECT PersonID, MAX(AddressID) AS MaxAddress FROM AddressTable GROUP BY PersonID) dt

ON dt.MaxAddress...

I've had queries fail because I haven't set up the link or permissions correctly but never got results from the wrong server when using four part naming.

I assume that these...

I'm not entirely sure what is going on here. Could we see the stored procedure and the relevant VB, please?

Agree the 8k limit but he is getting chunks so I assume that this will be ok.

Forget ReadText. Just use SubString.

Should there not be a space in ']' + '(

You say it stops or hangs. Does SQL batch actually finish and return partial results or is it in a wait state or locking problem? Although the message...

Is it timing out, either on SQL Server or on the ADO connection object (they are separate settings)?

Are you passing parameters into your stroed procedure? If so, are you sure that they are being passed correctly? Possibilities could be variable type mismatches, padding or ascii...

Is the first one throwing an exception and SQL Server doing its usual trick of a batch abort?