First understand what a deadlock is ---somebody post a link here or just go back to books online

Try not to do a lot of different stuff in the same transaction....

First select each days totals into a temp table

so that you have date and total for that date on each row

Then self join

select a.xxx, etc.

from #t a

...

Even practical exams can be not so good:

When I got my single engine pilot's license the guy testing me got all over my case about coming in too high when...

The status will change.

I sometimes just look at master..sysprocesses for the spid in question and check progress of IO/cpu to see that a connection is not just hung.  As long...

I've been biting my tongue trying not to reply to this thread but I can't help it...

What color database?

(If you're familiar with Dilbert)

Seriously, to make up for that comment:

Most of...

OK, I had a big long rant/reply I wrote in reply that got lost by the silly applet which is this forum.

I'll sum it up by saying that this forum software was...

Do your max select in an embedded (temp table) query that you join to

select ...

   from tablex a

         JOIN ( select key, max( datefield )

                     from tablex where datefield is...

Use Replace to replace the CHAR(9) tab character to "" empty and subtract the diff in length

When I have the kind of situation where another person needs to load info on a scheduled basis...

 I set it up so they have network permissions to move an OS...

The best possible questions you can ask when interviewing people:

What do you not like about SQL Server (insert language/db here)? (or "name top 5 worst things about it...")

What's the worst...

the message you indicate seems to be one from a transform data task.  A sql error on an "insert into xxx select from..." statement would be different.

DBType_DBTimestamp doesn't sound right for a datetime field (but I'm not that familiar with DTS).

Once you import it into a SQL extract table I'd run a sql statement to insert...

I'd probably go the detach, copy, attach route, but it all depends doesn't it?

edit: and you can script all this using tsql...

Actually now that I think about it, I am curious...

How would one go about forcing you to change it?

Pantomime sarcasm?  Voodoo dolls? Threaten to cut off my own finger and...

I can't imagine not being able to make this work in a stored proc...

Likely it's a problem with your code.  If you like, post your snippet of code someone may...