The two I keep on my desk, and are full of sticky notes because they are so good:

Henderson's Guru book mentioned above

O'Reilly Transact-SQL Programming

select a.*, b.itemnum, b.itemdesc from #t a, #t b

where a.person = b.person

and a.itemnum > b.itemnum

order by 1,2,4

person itemnum itemdesc    itemnum itemdesc

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

Jim 123099 Folding Chairs   123044 Gas Trimmer

Jim 123105 Elite Vacuum   123044 Gas Trimmer

Jim 123105 Elite Vacuum   123099 Folding Chairs

Jim 194122 Shop-Sweep Indoor/Outdoor Vac 123044 Gas Trimmer

Jim 194122 Shop-Sweep Indoor/Outdoor Vac 123099 Folding...

Look up "date formats" in BOL.  You can get all the pre-fab constants in a ref titled, "CAST AND COVERT" in the T_SQL library.

If you a dumping your extract from...

Push from SQL Server to your ascii extract with this:

select convert(varchar(25), getdate(), 113)

My instance of Oracle reads this as a date without using any to_char or to_date functions.

Be sure to...

You can tell Oracle to recognize pretty much any format.  How you do it depends on whether you actually have a date data type or a varchar display of a...

BTW, don't understand why you would select into with an order by?

select

1 c1,

2 c2,

3 c3,

4 c4,

5 c5,

6 c6

into #emp_temp

declare @sql nvarchar(1000), @col_name varchar(10), @orderby varchar(10)

set @col_name = 'c1' --this has to be one of the column names

set @orderby = 'desc'

set @sql...

Simple and elegant. 

I am at a loss to understand why we inherit such tables in the first place?!  Primary Keys, Unique Constraints... these seem to be foreign concepts to some.

I don't like to waste an unnecessary function call when I use this so often I don't forget anyway:

SELECT CAST(CONVERT(VARCHAR(15),GETDATE(),101) AS DATETIME)AS "TruncAndCastDateTime"

GO

SELECT CAST(CONVERT(VARCHAR(15),GETDATE(),101) AS SMALLDATETIME)AS "TruncAndCastSmallDateTime"

GO

By the way, smalldatetime is half...

I keep this terrific article Chris wrote in my virtual briefcase:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/ccubley/findinganddeletingduplicatedata.asp

"There is a limitation in the Excel driver that effects the 'DELETE' keyword. If you attempt to use it, you will receive the error message, "Deleting data in a linked...

Let the point be that a trigger may be your answer.  You can play with the logic yourself until it meets yours needs.  Maybe like this?

SELECT     startdt, enddt, jobnum

FROM         dbo.jobschedule

startdt  enddt  jobnum

04/01/2004 04/02/2004 1

04/01/2004 04/02/2004 2

04/01/2004 04/02/2004 3

alter...

SELECT     *

FROM         dbo.TableA

iID sState dDate

1 InProgress 02/04/2004

1 Resolved 02/04/2004

1 Awaiting Feedback 06/04/2004

1 InProgress 03/04/2004

2 InProgress 02/04/2004

2 Resolved 02/04/2004

2 Awaiting Feedback 06/04/2004

2 InProgress 03/04/2004

select

iID, sState, min(dDate) MinDate

from tablea b

group by

iID, sState

having

sState = 'InProgress'

iID sState MinDate

1 InProgress 02/04/2004

2 InProgress 02/04/2004

If that's not what you want, show me the result set you expect based on the table...

SELECT     startdt, enddt, jobnum

FROM         dbo.jobschedule

startdt enddt jobnum

04/01/2004 04/02/2004 1

04/01/2004 04/02/2004 2

04/01/2004 04/02/2004 3

CREATE TRIGGER jobscheduletrigger

ON jobschedule

for insert

AS

declare @icount as integer

set  @icount =

 (select count (*)

 from inserted i

 inner join jobschedule j

 on j.startdt = i.startdt

 and j.enddt = i.enddt)

if  @icount...

select * from #temp order by 1

1 4/5/2004 inprogress

1 4/6/2004 inprogress

1 4/4/2004 inprogress

2 4/4/2004 inprogress

3 4/5/2004 inprogress

select

count(distinct intid) countdistinctid,

datepart(month, progdate) currmonth

from

#temp

where

state = 'inprogress'

group by datepart(month, progdate)

3 4