Wow, thanks all. Sure didn't know that. I always thought that I could depend on a heap being ordered in the order the data was entered. In fact the test...

Not worried about uniqueness in this case. I want the rows back in the same order they were entered (the physical order). If I issue a "select" with no "order...

Thanks for the info. I had no luck though. I tried starting the instance with the recommended command line switches, and all I got was an empty dialog box with...

Ok, I'll check Gail out. She's had a couple good answers for me before. Should have looked there first. I've been going through the "Stairway to indexes" stuff, I'm on...

I appreciate the feedback. The reason I've resisted splitting the names is that the part I'm not telling you is that what they have done is put a google like...

GMTA. I have had that solution exactly in the back of my mind. I was just trying to meet the challenge of optimizing what they came up with, before suggesting...

That makes great sense. Thank you Lynn.

I had not considered that SQL Server might find the FirstName_LastName index to be more efficient even when searching for a full name....

Now my table has well over 500,000 rows. Still ignoring my index though. I've attached my query plan if that helps.

Thanks Lynn, you are exactly right. That was a mistake on my part. I did not make that mistake in the real system. I corrected it, but it still ignores...

Like I said. I'm expecting about 4 million.

I decided it would be easier to post an example. This demonsrates my problem exactly. Notice the second and final query does an index seek, and the first query does...

I think I'm yanking everyone's chain for nothing. I think the problem is that the vendor told me the combination of these three keys is unique when in fact it...

Here's the trigger. Is this the right way to handle the inserts/updates? Notice that I'm finding the record to be updated via the joins. I omitted some of the fields...

It's a compound key, three strings.

This whole SSIS / Upsert is tricky business. I might be able to help the next bloak. I need to write a clear article on SSIS Upserts and spare the...