GilaMonster, the table has a lot of columns, and not all of them are needed every time. But no matter if I do select * or only include one column...

Thanks to everyone,

GilaMonster, I cannot use convering index because next_id and status are only used for finding records, but to display what I've found I need all fields.

I did DBCC...

Jesus Christ this is one mean piece of TSQL

Bravo. But please try:

SELECT @start_date = '2007-01-31', @end_date = '2007-04-01'

The script returns opening inventory 2/22, and...

Steve, can you give an example of such hash table? Would it be something different from BucketCycle table I proposed?

Of course "before" column is a must to be able to track...

Steve, Adrian, much appreciate your replies,

Adrian, this is one impressive script! But, as you already noticed, it doesn't work if buckets "cycle" several times. However, the script has one more serious flaw:...

Barry,

I personally don't see any problems about this approach. The real world is that a contract can be made with a company or a person. These entities have different attributes but this...

What I would consider is adding a level of abstraction for persons and organisations by introducing a common table "Party" that would incorporates all entities that can be used...

If you want to avoid dynamic SQL, you could use an UDF that will convert comma-delimited string to a table-type variable, and then use IN as usual.

SELECT * FROM customers...