Hi, I have the same database on two different machines, an SQL 2000 server (called myserver2000) and on an SQL 2008. I want to compare the contents of the same table mytable on the two different servers. From teh SQL 2008 server I first used the addlinkedserver and addlinkedsrvlogin procedures to connect to the sql 2000 server: EXEC sp_addlinkedserver 'myserver2000' , N'SQL Server' EXEC sp_addlinkedsrvlogin 'myserver2000', 'false', NULL, 'sa', 'mypassword' Then I wrote the following select to compare the contents of mytable on server 2000 and mytable on server 2008: USE mydatabase; SELECT col1, col2 FROM mytable EXCEPT SELECT col1, col2 FROM myServer2000.mydb.dbo.mytable Now I get an error, which translated ( I have a german version) is like: the OLE provider on myserver2000 sends the message "Could not find the needed procedure. Please contact the administrator." Do you have an idea how to solve this problem?

The EXCEPT operator is introduced in SQL Server 2005, so it won't work on 2000. Maybe you can use an alternative approach using joins or using EXISTS?MCTS, MCITP - Please mark posts as answered where appropriate.