I don't know if there is a performance gain using the SS2005 method, but if running SS2000 (or any other) then this will work fairly well:

declare @StartDate  DATETIME,
 ...

Wait a minute, fellas. Although I have never used GMT, it has always been my understanding that this was what one used to get away from all this time calculation....

Here it is right out of the db:

/****** Object:  UserDefinedFunction [dbo].[TruncTime]    Script Date: 06/15/2007 10:12:53 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
/*
  =============================================
  Author:  ...

Am I missing something here? Did the OP claim that the table held pairs of tuples for every... um, entry -- each identical except that one attribute held a constant...

Yet another answer -- really just a rework of the two you already got. Carl is right about the table with just a sequence of numbers. You quickly start wondering...

Wow. I generally do all I can to avoid temp tables but with almost 1.5M records, apparently the initial overhead averages out. Just for grins, how good is the hybrid...

Here's a solution that gets rid of all subqueries. It could be written simpler with CTE if you have SS2005. If you use the temporary table, I would still use...

Sure, but by replacing X with Y in any number of queries, we can have lots of fun. All queries have the potential to act differently if we modify them....

Well, I can't do that because it would remove every bracket in the string. I just verified, I can CREATE TABLE [dbo].[some]]name](...) and it creates a table named 'some]name'! I...

Thanks, I see that now and it makes sense (in some contexts).

I was just working on a proc that gets in table and column names and I wanted to make...

It must be something from a tutorial that is illustrating subqueries (and, possibly, DISTINCT). I can't see that it does anything more than

  select max(empsal) from emp;

I have something implemented that might work for you. It allows you to define standard names with any number of alternate names for each one. A function then returns the...

I used to work for Sun Micro in their Network Storage division. I am amazed at how much I have forgotten.

A LUN is a Logical UNit. If you have only...

Ian had a good idea, he just overwrote the value the OP wanted to sort by. So the records with the non-NULL values would be at the beginning but in...

Actually, this clears up a lot -- if nothing else, it makes me more appreciative of the scope of your problem.

You say your "underlying problem is that i cannot perform...