You defined the parameter as VARCHAR without specifying a length. If no length is specified, it it 1 character long, essentially VARCHAR(1)

So at the point of the if, @inputval =...

Looks like a severity 20 error, so there should be more information in the SQL error log and/or the windows event log.

Check them, see if there's anything useful.

Hehe.

Recently an architect that I was working with put my title down as Database Overlord in a design doc he was working on. That was 3 weeks ago. We're still...

Interesting.

I seem to recall a presentation where one of the devs of the execution engine spoke about collapsing functions (I don't remember the technical name). Maybe ISNULL is one of...

There are a number of possible causes.

You could be hitting hardware bottlenecks. You could have poor table or index design, you could have poorly written queries. You could have all...

Probably depends whether the data for the varchar(max) is in the row, or in separate (blob) pages. If the data's out of row then you'll be incurring extra reads for...

Something else to check. Are either the mdf file or ldf file marked as readonly? (Check the file properties)

No, because using functions on the column in the where clause means that SQL cannot use an index seek to locate the rows, and it will have to scan.

OR or...

Oh my. That's unexpected and very unfortunate

D&D's still a big part of my life. Got a game this weekend that I'm running.

No. It is never advisable to truncate...

Set the database into restricted mode. Means that only sysadmn and db_owner can connect to it.

Do you have a backup of MSDB?

If you recreate the database, you'll loose all your jobs, DTS packages and a few other things. They're all stored in MSDB.

If you don't...

Varchar also only stores the characters you enter. A varchar(1000) with 15 characters in will take up 17 bytes in the row (15 for the characters, plus 2 to store...

Ouch.

The first of those ensures...

If the NC was wider, I'd agree with you. As it it, unless Column1 is highly selective, or queries are done that only filter on and retrieve Column1, then it's...