Thanks Quassnoi, after considering it for a while that's the conclusion I came to, although I didn't realize that the CROSS APPLY would actually perform worse for high-cardinality groupings. ...

What I meant was that in a peer reviewed public forum, criticism should be welcome, even encouraged as long as it is well structured, helpful, and avoids personal attacks. ...

Thanks Mike, I'll keep in mind that any criticism of articles or disagreement will be met with animosity. I guess my opinion isn't welcome unless I agree with the...

I gave it a shot in a VM we have at work running SQL Server 2005. I'm a little unclear on the exact hardware its running on, but I...

DISCLAIMER: I do not consider myself to be a "DBA", and I don't have any sort of certification.

I'm going to have to disagree with most of you that this...