I would guess that it depends on what is doing the writing, whether or not it allows shared access to the file. Might be fun to test.

In general I'd...

Bill,

We use Win2K where Im at, but I've had zero problems with the SQL service packs. Check the MS newsgroups to be sure, but I imagine you're ok to proceed....

You could also use a DTS package to just export the tables directly. Not a "supported" technique since it references system tables, but reasonably safe in this instance.

Yet another way...

I havent worked through all of it, but usually the way you avoid the EXEC() scoping isssue is through a ##temp table.

Its an interesting problem, but I'd really want a...

That solution will work, but will not get you the benefits of a compiled plan. I would look for an alternative to 'use' - in my opinion(!) this is far...

40m is not all that huge. Their points are fair. Not sure that its worth arguing about even! Two things to consider. One is that whether or not you copy...

Joe - none that we are familiar with. If you do find something, post a follow up? I have not looked at latest versions of Crystal Reports/Analysis...might try that one.

Andy

...

Nothing wrong with either approach to me. I would normally try not to be doing a lot of extra disk access on the server, but this probably wouldnt amount to...

If you have Access 2000, you may want to take a look at it's "project" mode which gives you live access to tables, views, etc. The tradeoff is you lose...

Not that I know of. Linked server would be the way to handle this normally. Is there a reason that won't work for you?

Andy

What events are you profiling?

Yes, I believe you will still see the benefits of the compilation. Pretty easy to test - build it, run once so it can compile and cache the data, then...

How about posting what you have for code so far?

One thing to strive for is set based operations, not cursor. Sounds like you need to run either 3 count queries,...

There are some good samples and documents installed with SQL. Look in MSSQLServer\80\COM\Tools\DevTools\Samples\XML.

Andy

One other note - you can use SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL to change the behavior during concatenation operations. Use this option wisely and sparingly!

Andy