Okay Thom, if the load process drops and rebuilds tables when you fire your BULK INSERT, how about doing an ALTER TABLE to add the persisted computed column after you...

I was looking for the trick. 😉  Thanks for a simple one.

The query won't use the NCI because of the leading wildcard character, which you've already accurately identified.

The reason is because think about what the index actually is -...

Alan, I found the same thing.  When I tested them against one another (with de-entitization versus without) I found an average of 78.3% reduction in execution time.  I included it...