I'm the DBA for a large medical system in the midwest and we purchase many of our solutions versus doing in-house builds. While I'd flogg my developers for coding in this manner I'll tell you right now that I've seen this query structure in play quite a bit more than I'd like to coming from the commercial side. It's quite amazing how many decent app developers out there still fumble the ball when it comes to DB calls and coding. Arg! Good question from the standpoint that (whether good or bad) this stuff is still floating around out there.