>>I just had this discussion the other day with someone. I posted some code where I used ALLTRIM(STR()), and someone pointed out to use TRANSFORM() instead. Since I've never really used TRANSFORM() before, I thought I would see if there were any issues with it on Microsoft's Knowledge Base. I found the article that George Tasker mentioned, so I decided to stick with ALLTRIM(STR()).
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>The only problem with using ALLTRIM(STR()) is that if the size and number of decimal places isn't indicated, you only get the integer portion of the number (?ALLTRIM(STR(9.2)) && returns 9).

Another issue is the use of AllTrim() (regardless of what they trim) as a part of an index expression. The length of that expression is anywhere between zero and the maximum length of the untrimmed expression, and largely depends on the contents of the table. Using SQLs with trimmed fields may also render them UNION incompatible, even though the Selects in both parts of the union are identical.