I’m not a fan of debugging other people’s code. I’ve been staring at the same 23 line SQL script for the same 2 hours and I’m wondering how to move forward. The script  hits a Point of Sale database with transactional data and pulls all the sale transactions in a set time period that are account charges. The output is a Fixed Width file sent to our clients so they can payroll deduct purchases from our Point of Sale. It’s adapted from an Access 2000 query so there is some awkwardness.

Lots of substrings and casting.

So I got involved because the SQL script is pulling positive and negative charges and it would be better if it could filter the refund along with the original charge out of the file. It took me 30 minutes to actually pull any data with the script and I’m convinced it’s way off. No way are multiple people are payroll deducting $150,000.00.

I’m tempted to rewrite the thing. I’m also tempted to kick this back. But I’ll probably do it, but it’d be nicer if someone owed me a favor when I got done with it.

UPDATE: I finished this up this week. I created a table variable and inserted transaction numbers where an amount was a negative number. then i added a statement in the main select statement that would select where transaction not in (select transnum from @tablevar). since the refunded amount and the original charge both had the same transaction number, this let me filter out both of them. i’m sure you don’t care. i’m going to go play outside now.