I made up a quick test to verify Gila's suggestion.

Very interesting outcome.

Whoever is curios try to run this:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

GO

create proc [dbo].

as

begin

declare @i table (id int, NAME nvarchar(150))

select 'during exec', * From tempdb.sys.tables ORDER BY create_date DESC, name

end

GO

select 'after create', * From tempdb.sys.tables ORDER BY create_date DESC, name

GO

exec b

GO

select 'after exec', * From tempdb.sys.tables ORDER BY create_date DESC, name

go

exec b

GO

select 'after exec again', * From tempdb.sys.tables ORDER BY create_date DESC, name

go

DROP proc [dbo].

GO

select 'after drop', * From tempdb.sys.tables ORDER BY create_date DESC, name

GO

WAITFOR DELAY '00:01:00'

select 'after 1 minute wait', * From tempdb.sys.tables ORDER BY create_date DESC, name

GO

On my desktop (being effectively idle at the time) the table variable disappeared only in the "after 1 minute" resultset.

Very different from the behaviour on SQL2000: object is gone immediately after SP is completed.