For completeness: code for Phil's solution

public enum SortColumn (
Name = 1,
Object_Id = 2
)
public enum SortDirection (
Ascending = 0,
Descending = 1
)
public class SortSubClause (
public SortColumn SortColumn {get; set;}
public...

Yes probably the DBA's subtle way of getting me to learn about replication, or to leave it well alone.

And at least it was only the dev environment.

Thanks for your help...

As to why .. I deleted some rows from the publisher first - then noticed the delete did not happen in the subscriber - so then I deleted from the...

@joe Celko

Wow Joe, thanks for the thorough treatise!

In answer:  The original table does have a key, I omitted it as part of the simplification...

@luis Cazares
Thanks for this simplification - I have several of these reports to do, and this will help me get back into the SQL mindset.

OK so preparing this data for SSC seems to have stimuated a few grey cells

I've fixed the output it - as follows
However - can it be...

Yes it turns out that auto create statistics, and auto update statistics are off.  I know our DBA runs a daily job to update stats, but obviously that won't do...

Am I out of date? I am the only one who missing something here?

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure MyProc, Line 32

Incorrect syntax near 'THROW'.

Msg 2812, Level 16, State...

Definitely (A)

For sure advertise your own...

Thanks John,

Brilliant lateral thinking.

Technology changes so quickly - for a career in IT you will learn stuff that will be obsolete in 5 years. You will learn stuff you will never use...

Go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=29062

download and install this file:

ENU\x64\SQLEXPRWT_x64_ENU.exe this one is With Tools (i.e. includes SSMS - SQL Server Management Studio). I don't think you will need the advanced tools...

Is there a reason something like this wouldn't work?

CREATE TRIGGER CheckReportsFinished ON dbo.ReportStatus

AFTER INSERT

AS

DECLARE @COMPLETEDROWS INT = 0

SELECT @COMPLETEDROWS = COUNT(*) FROM dbo.ReportStatus WHERE [success flag] is not null;

IF (@COMPLETEDROWS...

This uses DiskPart.exe, which may give the information you need - I tried this in powershell and it did tell me the online/offline status of local disks. Not sure...

Well our current DBA has been referred to (and I quote) as "slash dev slash null" - (which seems to have multiple meanings ) - but the one in point...