All,

I just yesterday used the techique at a contract client with similar results although not quite as dramatic as the one I wrote about. To be fair though, there is a limit to how well this may work. After I wrote the article I came across another update that was being handled with a cursor. Within the cursor 18 columns had to be updated while pivoting data. I found I only needed 7 functions to perform the 18 updates but by the time all thoses calls were made for 2.2 milllion records, the new process clock out at the same speed as the old one. I tested individual calls and they were very short but that many had an accumulative affect. The good side though is that the code is so much simpler and easier to read that I plan to replace the old code anyway.

Have fun building your functions.