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About newsgroups We all get stuck from time to time. In most cases, someone else has already encountered the same problem, and solved it. This is what communities are for, people helping each other out. There are many communities out there; the one I know and participate in is the news server that Microsoft hosts. Where do I find it? You can use a newsreader, like Outlook Express, to connect to the news server. The URL is news://msnews.microsoft.com. Here you find many groups, where about 20 relate directly to SQL Server. If you don't want to use a newsreader or if you are blocked by a firewall, then you can use a web interface. You find the Microsoft web interface at the Microsoft SQL Server Community Homepage, http://www.microsoft.com/sql/community/default.mspx, which also has a lot of good information about other communities. Another is the google web interface. This is also great for searching the archives. Please read before posting You can greatly increase your chance to get a good answer by following a few simple recommendations: Do some own investigation first. The newsgroups are not there to replace the documentation that comes with SQL Server. The activity on these newsgroups is very high, and this results in some questions being unanswered. If you want to be a good community member, do a quick search in Books Online, the news archives and Microsoft Knowledgebase first. You'd be surprised by how many questions are posted that can be answered immediately after a few seconds of searching in the product documentation. But please don't take this as a discouragement to post. Be as precise as possible. Spend some time writing your post. Tell us what you have tried, the symptoms, and if possible how to reproduce your problem. The more information we have, the better chance we have of helping you. If you have T-SQL problems, help us to help you. Have you tried to do "dry programming"? It is very difficult. Most programmers want to run the code they write. Please post the CREATE TABLE statements for the relevant statements, including constraints but please remove things that make it hard to read (like COLLATE clauses and stuff like that). Also, post INSERT statements so we have something to work with. And the desired result. Include details about your SQL Server version, service pack, OS version and other relevant information. Have a descriptive subject. Also, make sure that the question is found pretty early in the text. Finally, here's a great link to how to post good questions in community forums. Most are actually only common sense and politeness. |