🙂 Hi. Back again.  The problem has gone away, but it doesnt make sense. 

To remind you all, and me, the query was either "select [specific fields]" or "select *"...

So... I am not crazy.  Okay, well, at least on this subject.

Disk fragmentation is low, thanks to...

Even more !

The entire execution time subtree cost for * is .0130; for the distinct it is 0.0123.  Yet the relative execution times are 360...

Okay. I did both options preceding each query, with the same basic results. The version with explicit fields took 10 min, while the other too seconds to 2 minutes.

[I also...

Not explicitly.  I tested them in separate sessions.  May I ask for syntax to do that? 

Really late to the game.  But my first thought was "Nice Software Stephanie" (Short Circuit: which one other has identified as well) ... followed closely by WarGames and Tron and...

To get parms back from a sproc, requires the OUTPUT keyword, which must be in the proc declaration, as well as the execution.  Like so...

create procedure Proc1 @parm1 varchar(10) =...

DOH!

Thank you 🙂

Noel gave you the essence.  One additional feature I am using more and more lately is the Return Code.  Here is an example...

create procedure proc1 as

-- do some calculation

-- if...