DavidM

The “object” type of SQL Server is hardly used and with good reason.  RDBMS are meant to be “strongly typed“.. it is the foundation of the domain/type concept. 

RDBMS : “What are you INSERTing Dave?”

Dave: “I don't know!“

RDBMS : “Get stuffed!”

Anyway I am knocking out a stored proc that returns “Quick Stats” to the client.  Basically just UNIONing..

USE PUBS
GO
SELECT 'Sales Count' as Stat, COUNT(*) as Score
FROM  sales
UNION ALL
SELECT 'Title Count', COUNT(*)
FROM titles

Too easy...But a request comes to include a “Last Date” statistic...

SELECT 'Sales Count' as Stat, COUNT(*) as Score
FROM sales
UNION ALL
SELECT 'Last Published',  MAX(pubdate)
FROM titles

“So we sold '1900-01-22 00:00:00.000' titles?..Good work Dave.. You're fired!”

“But wait, I have a better idea..“

SELECT 'Sales Count' as Stat, CAST(COUNT(*) AS SQL_VARIANT) as Score
FROM sales
UNION ALL
SELECT 'Last Published', MAX(pubdate)
FROM titles