get this... Index Wizard came through! 2 nonclustereds did the trick. one for Inst, one for Mark.

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [tbMark28] ON [dbo].[tbMark] ([InstID] ASC, [InstCurrencyID] ASC,...

both are used in too many other stored code objects without consequence. They're quick and inconsequential. fnEnumS is a lookup translator and fnPosMarketValue just does some simple math.

create...

thanks, but that's still non-deterministic. I don't think you can have getdate() in the body of a UD Function at all.

I was thinking the left, down approach was better as the directionals are easier to find. either way, thanks for the help gang.

Holy sh@#. How did you come up with that? Reminds me of the password in Contra to get 99 lives. Anyone remember that?

up, up, down, down, left,...

nah kid, I'm all over that one. that's for the application window. I'm talking about only the editor window inside QA, that is, the window that color codes...

No PK's defined in any of the 720 tables? That's unfathomable. I would start taking hostages. I don't envy your spot.

You must be having performance...

no specific case in mind other than the abbreviated code I already posted.

Can you give an example of why you'd choose any one idiom over the other 2?

NOEL:

whenever it occurs to me (once a month?), I run:

sp_updatestats

but it seems (from BOL) that this won't perform a full scan. I'll schedule the FULLSCAN to run every night...

1.) auto create statistics for the DB is ON

2.) DDL is never run on the underlying tables, DML very regularly (dozens of ups, ins, and dels per minute)

Remi's got it.

Sometimes Transactions can get screwed up as well if you handle them explicitly. I've had good luck using:

SET XACT_ABORT ON

to help that.

I never suggested your posts were fluff. You've helped me many times Remi. tx.

He's definitely on a blistering pace.

Thanks for the heartfelt opinions guys. I got the CTO's ear just before lunch and explained the situation. He had a few performance tweak ideas I hadn't thought...