I agree with Gary, I wouldn't know about configuring SQL > 2mb, it's not the case in my workplace. However, I figure if the need arises I could look...

Reminds me of playing Mastermind with my nephew. In one game I told him to take a close look at his scoring of my guesses, because there was no...

SmithDM, it's the other way around. Ordering by DESC will put the greatest sales on top - therefore you will get a list of your top performers.

I'm glad I...

Wow - the internet went down for a few minutes - and when my reply posts there's already 4 more!

Wouldn't a classic group by work?

I don't know your data types - it would help next time if you show a create table script.

Assuming month_end as datetime (why would...

if it's under 8000 bytes, you can convert to varchar & process:

SELECT datalength(textCol) -

charindex(')1(',reverse(cast(textCol as varchar(8000))))

FROM textTable

Otherwise I suppose it can be done with TEXTPTR.

Seems a...

Obviously a strategy has to fit the circumstances. The precalculated summary tables I used for dramatic gains involved data that was fully updated only once a day at 2AM,...

What do you mean by "Inline Updates"?

Wow!! that's awesome There should be prizes for great solutions like that.

I learned a few things:

1. I didn't know...

...or if you don't understand what you read there.

I see I've been upgraded to 2 star frequent poster. I'd be proud, except I'm sure it's automatic at 50 posts

For one thing, I was recently reminded that indexed views only work for the enterprise & developer editions. The other 2000 editions will accept the syntax, but not actually...

So it doesn't always create a temp table for ordering - does it depend on the execution plan?

Thanks - It's good to keep in mind if a query...

What really speeds things up is creating pre-calculated tables. These tables can be updated via triggers every time the master table updates. Then query off the pre-calculated table....

Antares, do you mean if I join a bunch of tables together that collectively exceed the row limit & try to sort them it wouldn't work?

This doesn't seem right. ...

Problem with Steve's answer is it doesn't work.

What's being asked is simple in Excel, but not as easy in SQL Server - calculate each row based on a calculation in...