Hi Paul-

Yes, all of my logic was originally built without bracket qualifiers. The complete tale is: We recently upgraded the database in accordance with the migration instructions provided by our vendor to remove the 2000 compatibility flag from the database (the application that needed that flag set used *= and =* to denote right and left outer joins).

Apparently, the upgrade set the compatibility flag to 2008, and when I was testing some of my integration and reports in our test vlan, things bombed horribly. I traced the problem to the stoplist keyword. I then posted my inquiry here. Yesterday I set the database compatibility to 2005 and everything works as it should (without qualifying brackets). If I change the compatibility flag back to 2008, anything referencing the STOPLIST table fails horribly with or without the brackets. I have my DBA talking with Ellucian (the application vendor) to see if setting the compatibility flag to 2005 will cause anything to break. Very strange.