I know this is an old post, but completeness of this thread I would like to add the below comments.

DBA as well as Jeff.Mason was partially correct in the sense...

Thank you Loki and Sean. very useful info.

regards,

FJ

For the love of the game, I tried your sp without using the functions to see how fast it can run. With test dat you provided, the result was before...

Matthew, have tried using the #temp table option. Just came from work.. couldn't participate before.. here is the fixed query. you may have to create the same for monitor as...

Also you can pre-create a #temp table with approval as XML colum for each item id and you can join in your main query later.

Somthing like this..

Select

lItemID,

...

If SSIS pacckage is not an option, then you can try using the BULK INSERT with a format file to import the text file.

If the incoming text file columns are...

Also it can be written as

Select * from tbl1 Where isnull(confirmed, -1) in (select distinct isnull(confirmed, -1) from tbl2)

Thanks guys.

Using Access... never thought of.. but sounds good.

Fredy