Colin,

You are completely correct that table variables are justly famous for big improvements on small resultsets, especially in savings on re-compliations on SPs. The question always seems to remain - what is the threshold at which you move from one to the other? Should we always write our queries in both forms, then performance test, and use the better version - I don't know.

At the moment, the hueristic I use is > 1000 rows, I look at using temp tables first, <= 1000 I look at table variables first. After that, if it is a frequently a case of deciding if it is an ad hoc query, or something that will be used with regularity.

I'm not sure why you think that temporary table, or table variables, wouldn't be used in complex queries, but that's a completely seperate thing.

Cheers