• Thanks for everyone's input.

    I know this is probably not the best way to do things. Again, I'm a programmer...not a DBA. I am not new to SQL, but I am also not a master at it. I use my programming theories/methodologies in my SQL development. So, that's why I am calling a function that calls a function that calls a function...etc.

    In the interest of time and getting this to work, I have changed the function to a stored procedure. It works just as well, and probably has better performance. Performance, though, is not a top priority at this time. Sometime in the distant future, I'm sure it will be a much bigger priority.

    The reason for the post was to get an explanation of why one function works and another one doesn't. I can only assume that the working function only checks the existence of data (using "exists"), while the non-working function actually selects data to be returned.