Didn't think of that...good idea. The issue I run into now is performance. There are about 50 columns on the table I believe and any one of them...

I think you make some good points.  There is the context of the situation though.  I can not make changes to the data on the mainFrame(no access).  Apparently the application...

Good to know its been seen before -we haven't had any issues with applications so Its a bit of a non-issue.  When we output the results to text it looks...

-What is the data in Mainframe for that character? Is that datatype compatible with SQL Server CHAR or VARCHAR datatypes?

Don't know -have asked several times.  New job!

-What is the length...

Good question.  Its junk from a main frame.  It was described as a hex character to me.  We've had the issue in several columns -all either char or varchar.