Quote Originally Posted by cjard
It's the little code-level things about SQLServer that I find most hindersome. If someone could show me how to format a datetime column into a string, pattern "yyyyMMddhhMMss", that would be great.. I dont find any of the predefined date formats appealing


Here's a start (from an Oracle site, aimed at ora developers creating a sqlserver based app)
http://www.psoug.org/reference/sqlserver.html

1) Lets take this to another thread..or PM (Brad and friends have been encouraging threads to stay on original topic and not drift...)

2) Since you already posted the question...There are alot of choices. The MOST flexible would be to simply develop the formatter in C# and install it as a CLR UDF. The capabilities of this are extremely powerful.