Not sure which actual plan you wanted (pre or post) so I've attached both.

Adding the suggested index does half the time.

Presumably an index was suggested as there is no other obvious way to achieve the same result with greater efficiency?

Thank you all for your suggestions and examples.

I went for the compiled C# code in the end. Partially because I am comfortable with this, partially because it lent itself to...

Some useful suggestions there, thank you.

I had started to consider SQLCLR as probably the correct route to go, but at that time I hadn't appreciated that SQL supported regular expressions...

It seems that the folder in which the package was attempting to delete files from had a few files which were not expected. The names of the files closely matched...

Thanks for clarifing the situation.

I thought there were issues transferring system dbs and have actually gone via the route you suggest.

Mike

Any ideas of what i'm looking for in the log file? The summary is as follows:

Overall summary:

Final result: ...

Ian,

Same server i'm afraid! It's two databases on the same server.

I think I've (maybe) identified what is going on. The live server is using a different context for the language...

More info...

If I copy the SELECT statement from the live query into a new SSMS window (on the same PC) and run it I get the date returned as mm/dd/yy.

So...

Sounds like my initial thoughts are confirmed.

Thanks for replying.

Mike