For those not having Yukon, etc I wrote this query.

The query tells you if the person has the 8 accounting periods required and that the distances between the periods...

Here is another solution involving just joins

select h.headerid,h.[sum]

from header h

inner join

 (select distinct b.headerid as bHID, b.item as bItem

 from detail b

 inner join

 (select a.hid, count(*) as ItemsSold

 from (select...

Very good question.

I would venture to say, that the answer to this question is not a piece of sql code. However, maybe somebody will know rightout of SQL text...

Here is another way probably a little faster, using a function

select Name, dbo.PosTitle(fkfirstChoice), dbo.PosTitle(fkSecondChoice)

from JobApplicants

create function dbo.PosTitle(@Choice int)

returns varchar(50)

AS

Begin

declare @Title varchar(50)

 Select @Title = PositionTitle from OpenPosition where pkPositionID=@Choice...

It seems that the question was to obtain the product key in the first gap. hence, we need a function that returns such value. I took Phil's answer and re-wrote it...

Two comments on Kenneth reply:

Kenneth said that he is not surprised to see that the beast is taking its toll on server resources. My question however, is why query :...

I think that under some conditions the number of rows to be updated should weigh into the decision to use memory tables.

I agree that if the table size is...

A quick update  on this issue.

Good news!!!. I let the query run for as long as it needed. It did complete after 16 minutes.  The final stats are shown...

AngelaBut hasked if I had updated the table statistics.

Yes, I did run the update stats for all the base tables but the query still hangs.

I let it run...

It seems that there is an easy solution.

The idea is to use induction as follows: if I know when two dates are contiguos then I should apply that query...

Antares686 suggested that I post the showplan. Attached in the showplan for the query with the search condition on. (the one that hangs)

StmtText                       StmtId      NodeId      Parent      PhysicalOp                     LogicalOp                      Argument DefinedValues...

I have been playing with RS recently and I can tell you that to get the designer you have to install RS client portion into an existing VS.NET IDE. The...