I need to select some data (surprise) from several tables in a linked database which is running SQL Server 2000.<BR><BR>Now the resulting data set will be about 10,000 records taken from ~ 8 ...

A common SQL habit is to use SELECT * on a query, because it’s tedious to list all the columns you need. Plus, sometimes those columns may change over time, so why not just do things the easy way? But ...