Another set of interesting stats. When I run the queries minus the ORDER BY clause and select only the count(*) as with your conditions I get the following:

-- ...

Hmmm! Good points. ...and thank you for a very good and rather thorough explanation of the issues around testing "apples to apples".

My main point was that...

@deroby,

Don't feel bad. In fact I think it's very important to explain to newbies that while this is an example of where LEFT OUTER JOIN can be...

Einstein gave us good advice when he said:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler".

Design is an exercise in making things only as complex as...

Please correct me if I'm wrong Mohan but I think the way this would be used is by inspecting the results and increasing the query timeout to a value greater...

If you went through the thread you should have noticed that the "while loop" doesn't buy you much if anything. The objective is to replace the cursor with...

All,

Sorry for taking so long to respond to your comments.  They are greatly appreciated.  I've been working 100+ hours per week on this project and don't get a lot of...

There is always more than one way to solve a problem.  While my personal bias is toward set based solutions for the many reasons posted here, RD Francis and others have...

I would not "categorically refuse to even consider using (cursors)".  I would simply say that it should be a last resort.  I can't think of any good reason why you...

The original code for SQL Server was developed by Sybase. Microsoft, Ashton-Tate and Sybase collaborated on the first version of SQL Server (4.2) built for OS2 in the late 1980's...

Great discussion!  As usual there are many ways to solve a problem and each of us has to determine based on our own experience how best to analyze...

Point of clarification: I meant to say that dynamic query optimization is lost "for the CLR stored procedure" This is because it is a compiled assembly sitting...

Andy speaks the truth!  The conventional "wisdom" regarding limitations on data capacity is just industry inertia.  No one wants to fix what ain't broken.  But since SQL Server 2000 size...

Thanks for the tip on using the Tools for Disc 2.  That worked great but now I can't get the management tools to install.  The installation fails with the following...