That's why I asked, if there is some known working pattern query optimizer uses. I'm trying to figure out, whether there could be a difference at 100.000.000 rows while there's...

Simply check the maximum value of all your different numeric attributes [wherever they originate from] and compare it to the BOL-section on datatype ranges. Your question is not really concise

First of all, you should really keep the pricing away from the routing. Your business rules might change ... Imagine, pricing will be based on [total distance] * some-amount + [number...

design is the seed, t-sql the burden. i face the same problem you do when trying to clean up my cellar. whatever you find there is not there by design....

Why don't you really look at the solution peterhe posted? It's complete and solves all of your needs. There's really not the slightest need for a loop.

As to the...

Now to the database part of the question ...

One simple way to achieve this is a simple pattern replacement: since all airports have 3-char-shortnames and airport shortnames  are unique, any occurrence...

Choose Bagdad instead of LA as the destination and you won't have to worry about the return flight. Did that help?

"Johnny Onion" is a reserved keyword in SQL Server and means "I'm not at home".

Have you had a look at the collation of you involved fields? Let Query Analyzer create...

>Whilst we could have a table that effectively just holds each of the floats from the array there would be a significant amount of data to go along with each...

I can't think of any reason, why one would want to do this. Why don't you store the values in another table?

another note: since a customer was not willing to switch to SQL 2005 and since I was not willing to do it the old way, I installed an instance of mssqlexpress...

I'd like to add on to this solution from a practical point of view:

In a similar situation sometimes new productioncodeid's (~activity id's) were created. But that usually didn't happen that many times, that...

It somewhat depends on your performance needs; one way to achieve it:

CREATE TABLE IDEnumerator (ID TINYINT PRIMARY KEY)

INSERT IDEnumerator (ID)

SELECT 1

UNION SELECT 2

UNION SELECT 3

UNION SELECT...

There is one in the script section here -> just lOOk

I suggest, no congress member and no SOX-auditor should be allowed in their jobs without a degree in physics. This will give you some basic clue: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/quantum-world/mg18925405.700

>Even for...