Matt,

I work for Violin and if you want I can put you in touch with out UK resources?

It is odd, I suspect its a feature of operator precedence and datatype precedence. But I have no real proof yet other than it happens.

Thank You! For your...

Maybe, but when I remove the org and user I get this:

select org,,last_name from #t1 with (nolock) where last_name like N'%????????????%'

|--Table Scan(OBJECT:([tempdb].[dbo].[#t1]), WHERE:([tempdb].[dbo].[#t1].[Last_Name]...

heres the plan when it does not work, you can see that it converts the unicode value

select * from #t1 with (nolock) where last_name like N'%????????????%'...

Sorry type-o 2005 sp2

Thank!

Can I ask what version and sp you are running and what collation? I ran your test as well and it worked as expected on 2005 sp4. The...

They are int's and the last name is nvarchar