I'm not laughing or mad, Joe. But you actually had two questions. Steveb already gave you a link to the UNPIVOT operation, which has an example...

Yes. Primary Key constraints force columns to be unique. For example, you usually have an employee ID number as a primary key for an employees table...

... and to strip off the time from a datetime column, you can use CONVERT

declare @sample datetime

set @sample = getdate()

select @sample as DateAndTime,CONVERT(char(10),@sample,101) as DateOnly

where B.col2 = '5' and B.col2 is null

-------------------------------------------

B.col2 can't be both '5' and NULL at the same time.

When you say a date field is "empty", does that mean the column in your table is NULL ?

If so, you can just take a count of the rows in...

My current thinking is along the lines of a trebuchet.

Next year I'm going to have one down by my dock. Most of my buddies find...

Note to self.... invent and patent pork chop slinger... the infomercials are going to be hilarious.

... and now I know there is a SIGN function... which of course returns just exactly what is needed for setting the "bits". Remind me never to take...

Seeing no way to improve on the CASE logic in the proposed solution, I tried using a CHARINDEX test instead of a LIKE test just for grins.

...

Ok, Jeffrey... I'll hold him while you beat the answer out of him 😉

You could always make your defaults null and then test/assign values as the first part of your proc. For example if you wanted the number 8 to be...

I agree about the use of an identity column instead of a trigger, but if you are determined to stick with your existing setup, the following will assign consecutive project...

How about this? Circa 1980, I was working for IBM and was introduced to something called SQL which we were just starting to sell as a programmer productivity...

Thanks. Sorry for letting so many days pass. They let us off early for Thanksgiving holidays.

Your join looks the same in all cases so this might work a little faster for you. I know it looks strange to have your criteria in both...