I'm confused why you think the size is large - I use int to store the CCYYMM period. That's 4 bytes not 8 (datetime).

It's rare, if at all, that...

Neato thanks for the improvements. I'll try them out in production soon as I burn em in.

"Why not just use the datetime value itself "for querying against"?"

If you mean the...

Sorry for the formatting. I hate it when forum interfaces remove all my formatting tabs. Unfortunately I am too used to tab instead of space formatting to...

-- You have two options that I can think of:

-- 1) Users use the pivottable functionality built into olap services (i.e. in excel its a snap) and just provide them...

I use execute(string) and sp_executesql also, for about the same reasons that Jeremy said. I'd be lost without them, especially the execute(string) one. I don't create stored procedures...

Sorry, I have no suggestions other than online help or one of those 21 days titles for resources. SQL server is quite a bit different than access in ways...

It's a hack, and avoids your security issues (sounds like physical security is a problem, or forced frequent changing of passwords on non system accounts), but...

What about writing a silly...

Probably already thought of it, but insert into is slower than select into, truncate faster than delete, inserting into tables with indexes already defined is slow (bulk wise) especially if...

One reason BCP is so fast is because there is no transaction stuff going on. If dumping the data from server A to a flat file for importing via...

Because I tried it and didn't like it- I wrote this when I needed to review a db for naming conventions, identity column usage, field type usage and matching, etc....

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

GO

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnIndexableDateTimeString

(@SeedDate datetime)

RETURNS char(17)

AS

BEGIN

-- Author: Norman Seymore

-- 11/19/2003

-- does what it says. I use this a ton, lately

-- it's usually to...

drop function dbo.fnRemoveNChar

go

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnRemoveNChar

(@String nvarchar(400))

RETURNS nvarchar(32)

AS

BEGIN

-- Author: Norman Seymore

-- 11/19/2003

-- removes non-numeric data from an nchar string

-- essentially extracting numeric data from junky fields

-- One use of this is...

If you don't use roles then you will be stuck with a lot more upkeep.

Unless I miss my guess all of the objects are already dbo owned, since it sounds...

Can you post your ASP code?

Picking the best document out there for your situation is a good diplomatic effort inner-office, but I like Andy Warren's suggestion for dealing with the developers also for diplomatic reasons....