Richard,

Try out Jeffs tally table method, if you haven't already, you should find it's even faster.

I got the following times on a 9000 element source string.

------------ XML Method ------------

(9000 row(s) affected)

SQL Server Execution Times:

CPU time = 235 ms, elapsed time = 228 ms.

------------ Tally table method ------------

(9000 row(s) affected)

SQL Server Execution Times:

CPU time = 156 ms, elapsed time = 159 ms.