"You should take transaction log backups while this is running to avoid log autogrows which could slow you down even more. " * Noel

This doesn't seem possible...

Lynn, Jeff had mentioned the log file and you had a comment to back it up between statements; however, I am using simple recovery and ss2005 doesn't let me...

Thanks Lynn for your input, but it's not helping me much. I ran the script you posted and the 1st statement had 213 batches and took 49 minutes. ...

That worked.  Thank you.   However, is there a way to change SQL Server's internal datatype mapping of exporting to Access so that when it sees SQL Server's varchar(n) it will...

Interesting and good to know.  I tested it for my on proof:

declare @myid int

set @myid = ''

print @myid

it prints a 0

Good question!

The input file is medical claims data that is not in a columnar format (neither fixed nor delimited).  It is record driven with...

I have been using DTS and I'm only getting 50% of the file every time for every file.  However, I tried the bulk insert statement with a format file and I...

I'll try that, though it would be nice to have a better method since I'll be getting these files on a monthly basis. 

I also need to try the bulk...

SELECT RIGHT(SPACE(20) + 'example', 20)

That is amazingly simple and it works great for my need!   Where you have '20' I will use the width of my CHAR(x) field and...

Wow!   That is tremendous Steve and it works great.  Thank you so much.  I have spent several hours in the online manual trying to...

Thank you Gabor.   The disk with tempdb is out of space.   The settings for tempdb is on auto grow with  unrestricted max.   I'll need to work on the space issue.   

SELECT count(distinct( BINARY_CHECKSUM(*))) FROM TableName

The above did run faster at 2:20 (Jonathan's method is 3:03) however, it comes up 145 records shorter. Why would that be?

Thanks Jonathan! That works great.

select count(distinct *) from XXXXX

The above gives me: "Incorrect syntax near '*'."