It is, but it could be a lot simpler:-

INSERT INTO wce_contact (UNIQUEID,contact,firstname,middle_name,lastname,stu_id,dob,

gender,national_insurance_no,Learning_Difficulties,Learning_Diff,Disability,ethnicity,

address1,address2,address3,city,postalcode,phone,emailaddress,mobilephone,

STEN_Employer_Identifier,record_type, Date_Created)

SELECT S.stu_id, S.Student_Forename + ' ' + S.Surname, S.Student_Forename, S.middlename,

S.Surname, S.stu_id, S.Date_of_Birth, S.Sex, S.NI_Number, S.Learning_Difficulty, S.Learning_Diff, S.Disability, S.Ethnicity,...

Generally no, but it does depend what you're doing. Any queries across the two servers that involves joins on string values would have to have a COLLATE clause added...

Here's a couple of suggestions

If you're not using the 64-bit version of SQL Server you could create a linked server to a copy of each Excel report file and then...