One caveat however, is the filter is going to be an issue since this will span across some 50k items. I just used this as a sample set :). I...

My apologies Mr. Celko but I disagree with you, not on the grounds that you're applying MySQL to a SQL Server problem, but rather to agree with the OP that...

Lynn,

Not really true. What if someone comes along and sees some code that will work for their task, but doesn't realize that the code they copied is inefficient for the...

Jeff,

Thanks for the compliment even if it was a bit hesitant.

You can't blame me for wanting to have a bit of fun with this one as I'm still in my...

Ooops.. Bad idea... Never mind.

Thanks Jeff. Thought I had a brain freeze there.

If you like truly cryptic solutions that can lead to job security, you may want to consider this:

DECLARE @l TABLE (ID...

I must be missing something here... Like why is a split string function needed at all?

DECLARE @l TABLE (ID INT, [Name] VARCHAR(30), Location VARCHAR(100))

INSERT INTO @l (ID, [Name], Location)

SELECT 1,...

If you don't need @period for anything, you can do it this way.

declare @end datetime

declare @start datetime

set @start = '2011-01-12 19:59:00.000'

IF DATENAME(dw, @start) IN ('Sunday')

select @start = DATEADD(Day, DATEDIFF(Day, 0,...

THANK YOU ALL !!, it's working this way:

DECLARE @minage INT

DECLARE @maxage INT

SET @minage = @FromAge

SET @maxage = @ToAge

if @minage > @maxage set @minage = @maxage + @minage

if...

Also, I think your repeat counts are wrong.

--LocCustomers(Visits)

--11(2), 2(2)

--21(1), 3(2), 4(1)

--31(1), 3(1), 4(2), 5(3)

So now, counting repeats I get:

Loc Repeats

1 2

2 1

3 ...

If I may, I'd like to ask a question as I've taken an interest in this problem.

If I construct a list of locations, and assign to it the customers that...

Phil,

I am no expert with Dynamic SQL as I try to avoid it. However I realized early on that you might want to do something like that. The...

Bad data? When do we ever store bad data in our databases?

Might work if you changed all data to data+'__' though.

I found myself with some unexpected time on my hands this morning, so here is the solution decomposition. Note that I've slightly changed the code in a couple of...

Old or new, this is pretty easy:

DECLARE @d TABLE (data VARCHAR(max))

INSERT INTO @d (data)

SELECT 'AIT_FIT_projecto and moonbeat'

UNION ALL SELECT 'AIT_FIT_projectofile where handled'

UNION ALL SELECT 'AIT_FIT_pritibabe every way'

SELECT SUBSTRING(data, 1, CHARINDEX('_',...