As one of those "wallflowers" I have to agree with Phil. I have enjoyed reading the newsletter and various articles for over 5 years, but only answered about 3...

I've always managed to avoid cursors in an actual application, however I have used them for altering table design.  Someone gave me a database with several table that had lots...

You might be able to reduce the time a little more by using an 'exists' instead of the join on the code table.

Extract from BOL

Have you tried re-creating the ADP?  I would have said it was some sort of connection issue casued by network changes, but the fact that they can connect manually implies...

Take a look at what you can do with triggers.  if you add an insert trigger to the parent table you can (probably) write all the child records in one...

There shouldn't be any data issues, but check http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/features/choosing.asp to make sure you are not useing any Enterprise only features.

Or use the isnull function...

where isnull(column, '') <> ''

To save putting isnull around all your feld names you might want to look at SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL.