From BOL:

and

There's your limitation of 128 characters.

I've added 2 more hints in the list:

- Check for existence(2)

- Check for non-existence

Thank you Scott.

I've tried to undo my wrong in the list. Any better suggestions?

It's been wrong in my list for a long time already. Luckily not many people in...

select

mem.FirstName,

mem.Surname,

mem.Allocation as Allocated,

isnull(usage.[Quantity],0) as UsedUp,

max( 0, mem.Allocation - isnull(usage.[Quantity],0)) as LeftOver

from dbo.MemDetail mem

...

Scott Coleman (12/11/2007)

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In the example for comparing a mandatory and an optional column,

select 1

from dbo.Table t

where nullif( t.mandatorycol, t.optionalcol) is null

Am I missing something, or...

Out of curiosity, wouldn't the following have done the trick for you too?

UPDATE s9

SET

institutionname = x.surname

FROM dbo.s9ge s9

INNER JOIN (

...

I fully agree that you should first identify the most called/heaviest queries in your database and concentrate mostly on optimising those. Your objectives can be any combination of: less cpu-load,...