I'm trying to apply what I've learned in the APPLY links you left me, Luis, to my solution. Thus, I want a TVF for the right half of the query. By right half, I mean the query to the right of the OUTER APPLY which gets the createdate for each bench in the input field.

I'm getting error when I try to create the function:

CREATE FUNCTION GetBench (@bench varchar(20))

RETURNS TABLE

WITH SCHEMABINDING

AS RETURN

SELECT r.createdate

FROM Runs r

INNER JOIN runs_machines rm ON rm.runid = r.runid

INNER JOIN Machines m ON m.machineid = rm.machineid

WHERE m.NAME LIKE (@bench + '[0-9][0-9][0-9]')

AND r.createdate > dateadd(M, - 3, getdate())

error:

Msg 4512, Level 16, State 3, Procedure GetBench, Line 5

Cannot schema bind table valued function 'GetBench' because name 'Runs' is invalid for schema binding. Names must be in two-part format and an object cannot reference itself.

Can you point out what's wrong in the TVF? Thanks.