Just keep in mind, David... it breaks at 8k... I think that won't happen for quite some time, though.

Manchester UK, eh?  I've always wanted to see that place... I may...

Exec sp_Locks

Don't fight 'em... don't tell 'em... put triggers on the tables for these.  Most developers don't even know how to spell trigger never mind go looking for them.

Ummmm.... since when is 12/01/2005 a month end date?

Good thinking Chandra.  I'll have to try it that way sometime because it looks like a really good idea especially since it wouldn't have the 8k limit in the method...

Tom, ya got lucky... as Sushila stated, most don't read down a thread this deep especially when Sushila and Mike are having a cyber reunion

Running out of numbers?  It can't be because of SQL... BIGINT is H-U-G-E!  You could just change the datatype of the column and, bingo, more numbers.

If the restriction is because...

BANG!   I'm dead.  You guys finally proved your point with some cold, hard facts.  I didn't like Carl's test the way it was because...

Greg Wrote: Go ahead and use your Scalar UDFs on large datasets, and one day if the set becomes large enough, you will be re-evaluating those UDFs.

Allow me to quote...

Here's the late night (quiet server) run times for 25K rows...

Formula in SELECT

(25000 row(s) affected)

00:00:00:080

------------------------------

Function in SELECT

(25000 row(s) affected)

00:00:00:157

------------------------------

Formula in WHERE

(25000 row(s) affected)

00:00:00:593

------------------------------

Function in WHERE

(25000 row(s) affected)

00:00:00:580

------------------------------

==============================

Function in SELECT

(25000 row(s)...

Ah... now I see ... it was 200k rows, not 2M rows...  too late at night... It does support what we said earlier......

No fair!   You used a real server with the Enterprise Edition... I used a pc with the Developer's Edition!

Well, they say one measurement is worth a thousand speculations.... so, I did one.  I'll have to eat a little crow on the "clearly they are not slower" thing but...

Harley,

That's an outstanding idea!  Thank you.  It's nice to see people treating SQL as a computer language instead of just a repository.  I do have a couple of suggestions, though...

1....

Serqiy,  that was my finding, as well.  I was being conservative considering the volitile subject. 

My thought is that properly written UDF's are much too valuable to simply write off...