Thanks for replying; I now have a situation where there are four possibilities:

1) ISNULL

2) COALESCE

3) COALESCE with CAST/CONVERT

4) Modify the column from SMALLINT to INT

I've run each of the three "code" solutions, and notice that I get a slightly different exec plan with ISNULL vs. COALESCE; the Compute Scalar operations for the COALESCE versions each have a small (but larger) cost than the ISNULL version, and the COALESCE versions have the Compute Scalar operation before the Sort operation; the ISNULL Compute Scalar happens after the Sort. All that said, there seems to be no significant difference in performance benefit for any of the options. At this point, I'd vote for changing the column definition and using COALESCE.

As an aside, I notice that most members of the forum have cool mottoes or quotes, so I guess I need one, too.

Perhaps this: "I think myself quite a wit; my friends say I'm half right".

~ Jeff