well, it is a pretty complicated join.

you might be able to improve perf by using a few temp tables instead, to decrease the number of joins.

You have many scans on the "par" table, in different spots in the plan.

is that a large table?

???

select cast(deptno as varchar) + ',' + ename

insert into MyDestination (MyCol)

select MyCol from MySource

The title of this thread completely confused me at first.   Probably you shouldn't call temp tables "hash tables" in the future, lest you confuse others.

not exponentially slower, only power law slower.

if you are using the text datatype, there is no practical limit to how big a string will fit in it. same with ntext.

the ones that are limited are...

any assembly implementing a CLR sproc that reads from the file system must be created with the EXTERNAL_ACCESS keyword. and as the error msg says, you can only create...

also sqlspec does more than just SQL Server.

Oracle, MySQL, Access, Analysis Services are supported.

DB2, Sybase, PostgreSQL coming soon...

select * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PARAMETERS

doesn't this give you a hint?

Error 2(The system cannot find the file specified.) occurred while opening file 'C:\Program' to obtain configuration information at startup. An invalid startup option might have...

they are the cmd line args you pass to sqlservr.exe. they would be defined in the properties page for the sql service in Service Control Manager.

see:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190737.aspx

why don't you do what I suggested then. did you even read my post?

if you are using bcp and can't create a sproc, you can put the whole thing in a .bat file and build up your query in an environment variable, so...

I think it's because you have a function call in the where clause.

what does the plan look like if you take the function call out, that is:

UPDATE EmpApp

SET...