Thanks, that explains it. I thought, as you write, that the engine would evaluate the inner select individually, then apply the outer If Exists. But if it's generating an entire...

Certainly, this is not a model of efficiency - I wrote that myself in the initial post.

However, the entire view (either a single "1" or an empty recordset) is materialized...

I looked at the execution plans, and of course, they are different, but I'm not that good at reading them. Or more properly, I can read them okay, but understanding...

Would that have the same effect as what I'm doing? I have studied backup manuals and online tutorials until I'm blue in the face, but I'm still a little vague...

I realize this is a very old thread, but people do read archived posts for information, so I'm going to add my two cents worth. Adjust for inflation as necessary.

Just the schema, then I put object like views and stored procedures into the schema.

Aha. It may be that -I- was able to write to read-only schema, since I have dbo permission on my login. I thought that the more restrictive permission would apply,...

Hm, now I'm really curious. Thanks for the explanation, although I'm still a litttle fuzzy on the details. However, my system is running well enough, so I can afford to...

I'm also looking forward to reading the article, but from the graph, it looks like simply using a 70% fill factor almost eliminates index problems. Am I interpreting that correctly?

I do not routinely use sysadmin, due to security concerns. I do have an account that has dbo access, which is what I connected with. Sysadmin I use only when...