@matt-2 & Sergiy - I'll have to repost a better example. I think the point was missed. The predicate applied by the WHERE clause is not pushed down to the view at runtime. This is evidenced by reviewing the execution plan and seeing that a "clustered index scan" is being performed on the underlying table *and* returning all the rows in the table. A few operations later the predicate is applied. My whole point is the ranking function should only execute over the returned data (i.e. the predicate being applied first), not all of the data in the table. This is further illustrated by 2 things - first I removed the ranking function from the view and second, putting the ranking function in the actual select statement over the view. Both examples show the appropriate index seek and only one record is returned.

I'll post better and more elaborate examples later.