Actually, both will do an index scan, I believe...

Yeah, you could... but who cares? So long as the code executes correctly, you may not need to see it.

Under {Tools}{Options}, click on the [Results] tab and see what...

The LIKE will be just a tiny bit faster in this case because it returns only the rows that have precisely 3 digits... the LEN()<9 will return things that have...

Heh... on the other side of the coin, how do you know it's not broke unless you try to fix it. 😉

You mean like doing the SELECT/INTO from a "derived" table with a "Top 100 Percent"... dunno... haven't tried that, but I will 😉

How are you viewing the code? If it's in Query Analyzer, it may just be a view setting under Tools Options.

You can concatenate about 256 8k variables for an...

I do wish they'd go back to a forum specific search...

See what I mean, Marcus? No... no one wrote 100% of the code you needed... but, unless I miss my guess, David's code will be very easy for you...

Sorry... I didn't say it quite correctly... if the table is preformed with an IDENTITY column, you'll be ok... it's actually when you use the SELECT/INTO with the IDENTITY function...

The table name cannot be variable without using some form of dynamic SQL... kinda like...

DECLARE @TableName SYSNAME

SET @TableName = 'sometablename'

EXEC ('SELECT * FROM ' + @TableName)

Thanks for the feedback, Matt...

I suppose the reason why I only got 40% improvement out of SELECT/INTO is because I'm running an "ancient" 5 year old P5 running at...

Well, at least that's a polite way to "bump" your post... 😉 This isn't "instant...

Oh, sorry... yes, your query is the ticket... mine is wrong.

Perhaps, something like this...

select first_name

,last_name

,government_id

from people

where government_id like '[0-9][0-9][0-9]-%'

... and no... I don't recommend using two loops 😛