Ah. No I'm not going mad, just connected to the wrong instance :blush: Disregard the last post, the max id query is still taking forever.

I'll get back to you when...

Well the plan is the clustered index scan you'd expect (with a stream aggregate thrown in for partitioning).

However, now the query runs fine. Even after dropcleanbuffers. Yet it was consistently...

Ooohkaaay. I think I just ran into the scenario where the wrong partitioning can destroy your performance. Shame the documentation isn't a little more explicit on what NOT to do...

On the

Msg 15404, Level 16, State 10, Procedure sp_grant_publication_access, Line 136

Could not obtain information about Windows NT group/user 'johndoe', error code 0xffff0002.

Error when trying to add a publication from...