ColdCoffee (7/30/2012)

Instead, you can use DATALENGTH function to get the length, inlcuding white...

Thanks Sean, but I was joking with this because I'm not sure palindromes count as a "practical application".

You can use it to check if 2 phrases are palindromes.

Just kidding.

It's important to give all the information possible in the first post, otherwise the solutions might not be completely accurate.

Here are 2 solutions with DDL and sample data (something that...

How would you define "the first ocurrence"?

I'm not sure if this is the best place to search for that answer, as the best solutions would be oriented on MS SQL...

Thanks Jared, I think I couldn't have explained that well.

Of course, I know what I'm doing but I have problems to explain when I see some things that might look...

This could be easier to translate (if even needed)

DECLARE @tTabletable(

IDint,

namevarchar( 20));

INSERT INTO @tTable

SELECT 1275, 'Customer A' UNION ALL

SELECT 3472, 'Customer A' UNION ALL

SELECT 2812, 'Customer A' UNION ALL

SELECT 1245, 'Customer...

Was this a homework assignment?

Do you really need the first '%'?

That prevents you from using an index (As far as I know).

If you could drop it, the query would speed up.

Yes, it's possible.

Look for "subqueries" or "Common Table Expressions (CTE)"

You could simply drop the conditions and the union.

SELECT EID,

[Status],

MAX(EDate) AS EDate

FROM TheTable

WHERE [Status]='cp'

GROUP BY EID,[Status]

ORDER BY EID,[Status]

It should...

You should post DDL and sample data, so we can compare results.

Added: Also post the query that returned 0 for the counts.

I'm curious Lynn,

You presented the first solution just because it would be a correction of the original query?

Because it seems to me that it would give terrible performance compared...

That's the problem we face when SQL Server does not use the same datatypes for all of its tools.

the value you're looking for should be: true (with no quote marks).

I'm...

Try printing the code stored in @DynamicSelect and...