Dear All,

Thanks for this, I think I've found some non-valid times, and this is the problem. SQL error messages never lie!

Regards, Greg

Nope, they are all 4 chars in length...

OK will try, good idea.

I notice also that:

declare @sTime varchar(5) = ' 2359'

select isdate (@sTime)

returns 1! So not a useful check...

Greg

Yes, well good idea - but I've trimmed just in case, and displayed the string with [] around it, just to be sure that's not the problem.

I've tried to find...

Just to make diagnostics easier, I inserted the hours values (1100, 1425 etc.) into a 1 field temp table - still varchar(5). I thought I'd see the same convert error...

Nope, not filtering any rows.

Thanks all. Strikes me this isn't very good. I think it's the same for update and delete too. I guess it's complex/very difficult to chunk up the work and thread...

All I can think of here then is that some tasks (ie, a delete, or an insert exec) cannot be parallelised, regardless of server settings. So, in effect the bottleneck...

16 hyper threaded up to 32

Hi Markus,

Yes, I see what you mean, but...

I'm running these query tests standalone so no other users in the way.

1) There are no triggers on the table

2) It's...

Dear All,

Thanks for the posts - this is an old one that I solved a while back (just using case statements as I recall). Didn't expect any further postings -...

One idea would be for me to delete those Off shifts. The remaining problems may be easier to address:

Whilst for sickness, gaps in days don't trigger new episodes, they do...

Chaps,

Due to my poor test data, it's not quite there. In fact it's worse, but that's my fault.

What's happening is that all Off (basically placeholders for "nothing's happening here")...

Well I must say:

1) You guys operate at a level of SQL comprehension way beyond me ! It is (and I use the word without reservation) awesome (PS I am...

OK best I can think of then is to use a calendar table to plug holes in the data - processing each staffid one by one in a supervisory cursor...