Ahh, I see now. So, although the nullif() function is returning a NULL value, it is a NULL value with a datatype of varchar(1). I always was more...

Thanks for the responses, guys. I can get around the problem easily enough, but I was really just curious to know if anybody had any theories as to why...

Thanks for your replies Ian and Grant,

I think the author of this article must have written this just for me - because it all fits.  I will add the Recompile...

Hi Bill,

I think the penny just dropped and I understand what you mean.  I will try this when I am back at work next week.

Kind regards,

Martin

Thanks for your reply, Bill.

The problem isn't so much with the sql instance, as with the firewall - it effectively needs to make an external IP address available of, say,...

Hi again,

apologies for being neglecting my post - I have been away for the weekend.

you are correct, Jeff and Jules.  This data is held in a 'cache' table.  The user...

Even better - Thanks, Jeff.

This is definately one for my code snippets library

Thanks very much for your replies everybody.  One thing my simplistic example didn't make very obvious is that there could be up to 40,000 rows in the table, so using...

Thanks for the reply, Jeff.  I have so far rebuilt the clustered index as suggested above, and so far (fingers crossed) there have not been any more occurances.  However, I...

Many thanks both of you for your replies.  I will rebuild the clustered index, and check the disk subsystem and then monitor to see what happens.

Martin

When I tried this example, I got 05-10.  I got the same result regardless of the value I placed in @Date.  The same thing happened when I tried this from...

If anybody hasn't seen the MS system table map before, you NEED to download it now.  Trust me, you will swap your Granny for it!!

http://download.microsoft.com/download/SQLSVR2000/sysmap/2000/WIN98MeXP/EN-US/systbl.chm

Thanks for your replies.  I've decided that there isn't a way to do this using a single select statement, so I have created the following solution which will pull the...

Hi Jesper

The dates are pre defined by our accounts department; there is no actual formula.  You are right about start dates always being a Saturday, my Monday to Friday analogy...