Steven,

Not sure why you used all of those yukky loops (reference my mantra):

IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#Years') IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE #Years

--a table to hold the sample data

CREATE TABLE #Years (

[ID] INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,

[StartYear] DATE NULL,

[EndYear] DATE NULL,

PRIMARY KEY (ID))

DECLARE @NumSampleRows INT

SET @NumSampleRows = 10

;WITH Tally (n) AS (

SELECT TOP (@NumSampleRows) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))

FROM sys.all_columns)

INSERT INTO #Years

SELECT [StartYear]

,[EndYear]=DATEADD(day, ABS(CHECKSUM(NEWID())) % 6000, [StartYear])

FROM Tally

CROSS APPLY (SELECT [StartYear]=DATEADD(day, ABS(CHECKSUM(NEWID())) % 50000, 0)) a

SELECT ID, [StartYear], [EndYear], OddStr=(

SELECT CASE n WHEN 0 THEN '' ELSE '/' END +

CAST(YEAR(DATEADD(year, n, StartYear))%10 AS VARCHAR)

FROM (

SELECT 0 UNION ALL SELECT TOP (DATEDIFF(year, [StartYear], [EndYear]))

ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))

FROM sys.all_columns) a(n)

ORDER BY n

FOR XML PATH(''))

FROM #Years

GROUP BY ID, [StartYear], [EndYear]

IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#Years') IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE #Years

Edit: Fixed a minor compatibility issue with SQL 2005.