ScottPletcher (8/8/2014)

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TheSQLGuru (8/8/2014)

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ScottPletcher (8/8/2014)

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My first choice would be to use RECOMPILE and just force SQL to rebuild a plan every time.

But, if a HASH join is the "good" plan, forcing a HASH join is much safer overall than forcing a LOOP join. You might try that for a range of values and verify that it works OK across all of them. This, too, may not be the "best" solution, but it should be a workable solution.

I am curious why you say HASH force would be safer. I would say just the opposite...

My thinking is:

LOOP is extremely -- even prohibitively -- expensive on a very large number of rows.

HASH might not be ideal for a smaller number of rows, but it shouldn't be awful either.