I know this is taking the discussion off-topic but I think there could be some mileage in a SQL Server Mythbusting article to debunk those things everybody 'knows' about SQL Server. Obviously the Exists thing is a prime candidate. Other ones that come to mind are 'Table Variables are always held in memory/Temp tables are always written to disk', 'Subqueries perform worse than joins', 'Cross Joins are always bad' and 'Cursors are always bad' (note the 'always' - I'm not disputing that they're abused an awful lot of the time 🙂 )