I didn't get much out of the article but I hadn't noticed the Date | Text to columns... feature of Excel before. Thanks for that. I've been using...

I realize this is two years later but here's a way to simulate the rank function.

create table #x ( playerID int, score int );

insert into #x ( playerID, score )

...

I'll have to agree that it's a matter of perspective and preference. My preference would be for object names to be both case sensitive (you have to use the...

I've done a DTS table transfer from a staging server to production and misinterpreted what the Include all dependent objects checkbox meant. In this case the production server was...

That may be true for _most_ programming languages, but the .NET framework supports SmallDateTime (v 2.0) in the System.Data.SqlTypes namespace.

Thanks for your help, Joe.

I am an application developer by trade and through necessity became a self taught mssql developer - I know, a dangerous combo. Anyway,...

Here's some sample data.

table1 before

key, value, status

1, null, null

2, null, null

3, null, null

4, null, null

table2

key, value, status

1, 5, 'A'

1, 2, 'A'

2, 6, 'U'

4, 3, 'A'

4, 9, 'U'

4, 7, 'A'

table1 after

key,...

Good article.  Maybe another bit of syntax to mention is how to deal with aggregates.  e.g. SUM(Amount) vs SUM(ISNULL(Amount,0)) vs ISNULL(SUM(Amount),0).