Alvin, I don't understand that....

it has a powerful data table compare and auto scripting feature.

It apparently can take two tables and provide a script to make sure they are equivalent.....at...

Why exactly ?

BTW: Thanks for that "THEN" but IMHO that should be optional.

Awesome Kristen.....and thanks....

I'll remember this one for sure.

Very elegant. I was all bollexed up with how to specify the CASE statement.

Now I Just execute: SELECT * from dbo.FnReturnTablesForGroup(1)

And a list...

Thanks Sean, but remember, my potential solution would effectively be 2 lines of code.

One to define the table via string, the other to call a function to convert it to...

Fair enough Sean, thanks for that idea.

However, I don't agree that using comma-delimited lists violates any rules of relation theory.

A list is a list....whether it's in table form or...

This compiled but won't execute:

Msg 557, Level 16, State 2, Line 1

Only functions and some extended stored procedures can be executed from within a function.

ALTER FUNCTION dbo.fnReturnTablesForGroup

(

@whichgroup int

)

RETURNS @RETTAB TABLE...

Thanks Sean, but whe I try to use a temp table, I get:

"Msg 2772 - Cannot access temporary tables from within a function."

What I am trying to do is develop...

My bad....the column was formatted as decimal (who did that ??!!**&&)

Thanks Luis for the explanation.....it's very slick.

I like to call these things "patterns" ...as they can be reused to solve similar problems.

Sorry guys, my bad....definitely having a bad day.

And DateAdd is probably efficient....as whenever strings are involved, the conversion is usually costly.

Lowell's solution is very slick and efficient.

Sean's solution is way...

Thanks for that...forgot about FORMAT.

The final solution:

SELECT Convert(smalldatetime,FORMAT(GETDATE(), 'yyyy-MM-dd hh:00:00'))

In fact that works with datetime format as well.

My solution was too convoluted....however, since no string conversion was involved, it...

RTFM: (FnDateOnly...

Thanks guys...that was not obvious to me.

Here is that function that I had mentioned in a previous post.....ughhh

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.IsBigInt (@a varchar(30))

returns bit

AS

BEGIN

-- Submitted to SqlServerCentral by William Talada

DECLARE

@s-2 varchar(30),

@i int,

@IsNeg bit,

@valid int

-- assume...

No excuse on Microsoft's part....should have been...