Probably...

So, without the plans in hand to compare them, everything I'm writing is speculation.

First up, we're attempting to compare the execution of two radically different queries, one with...

All execution plans are estimated plans. If you execute a query in combination with capture of the plan, you can add runtime statistics to the estimated plan. However, that plan...

Open the two plans up in Management Studio 17. You can compare them and it will identify all differences. It's either settings or statistics (if not structure or code) that...

The system_health session captures deadlocks and you can get the query itself from the deadlock graph. However, if you want to get specific on deadlock monitoring, I'd do it more...

Personally, I don't put numbers in varchar if I want them to be numbers. I put numbers in numbers columns. That way, no confusion. However, what you're looking for is...

There are ways to open encrypted procedures. So, properly secure and control access to the database and the server. That's a better mechanism than encrypting procedures. Further, you shouldn't be...

Yeah, you can do exactly that. The only worry is if you're using enterprise features. However, that would be an even bigger worry if you tried to stuff that into...