Thank you Jeffery, that sounds like a good solution to my immediate problem, I'm off to try that tonight.

yes, that is the exact query.

*every* row of that field is null, I am trying to make every row of that field blank so I can concatenate the field to...

Kramaswamy,

When I do this: alter table test add testcolumn text default ''

I get a colum with "null" instead of blank

This isn't what I wanted, what did I do wrong?

No, no triggers, I simply use SQL Server to do some number crunching through queries and have been trying to automate the process. The query actually took 11 hours...

Could that technique work if I wanted to automate the process?, that is, make sure the whole table was done before I went on to another query. ( this...

On my machine is says spid 53 and blk 53

so it looks like it is blocking itself?

Elliot W,

there is one process in the blk table that has a number - the command is "update", the pid is 53 but I am showing 54 as mine...

OK - I'll try that, thanks

Thank you Jerry, that worked perfectly

Found this link, I thought it was the best answer to my type of question I have ever read.

I am including it in case anyone else had a similar question.

Vijaya,

No, no hosting - just pure number crunch; run several queries that involve updating, filtering and sorting several millions of records, hosestly, just want a feel for what should...

Great, thank you for that input, sorry for not providing detail, etc - just wanted a little start on my building the machine - so now I will focus...

Yes, understood that it depends on a lot of things, but I guess the nature of the question is for a server that I just wanted to run large number...

Thank You

Thank You