Can "out of date stats" cause this problem?

"TRC, JK, JK3, YS, HA"

If the use picks JK, all the books with JK and JK% will come back instead of just JK.

Can you create another table that keeps the same information vertically??

table BooksDetailsBIC

Bookid int

BIC varchar(5).

That way the query becomes increadibally more simple, an much faster :

Select Col1, Col2 from BooksDetails...

Do you want to select the records where the bic contains the choice of the user?

If you can't change the table design, this query will always take long,...

For 2 :

IF Object_id('fnSplit_Set') > 0

DROP FUNCTION dbo.fnSplit_Set

GO

IF Object_id('Numbers') > 0

DROP TABLE dbo.Numbers

GO

CREATE TABLE dbo.Numbers (PkNumber int identity(1,1), dude bit null, CONSTRAINT Pk_Number PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (PkNumber))

GO

INSERT INTO dbo.Numbers...

For one :

Arrays and Lists in SQL Server

The Curse and Blessings of Dynamic SQL

Dynamic Search Conditions in T-SQL

I don't have enought information to formualte an accurate answer. Can you post some sample data and the results needed?

Also you can look at the like operator and charindex('search', 'InThisString',...

If I may : Cost: 806%??????????

I dare ya .

BTW I have Joe Celko on the phone, maybe I'll make him drop by

It is on my machine. Maybe it has something to do with the default collation of the server (but wouldn't make sens in my case). I think that...

Shared drive is a folder on a networked computer that every user in the system can read the files. Send the docs there so that you can reopen them...

HTH.

Yup. This Jedi will never side with the emperor .

No offense, but the code I posted in my first post is the fastest way to extract that information. Why did you choose otherwise??

Do you have large columns (varchar(8000), text image)?

what does the estimated execution plan shows?