No blocking at all. Infact I tried to close even the enterprise manager when uploading data since I did not want to add an extra connection (primarily for the restrictions...

 1. Did you consider using a bulk copy to insert the information?

> No. because we need to log errors on a record level. We were parsing / formatting, validating...

To address your concern of too many records to delete (bulk delete) I suggest doing it in a loop by set rowcount 10000 so that a batch delete is done....

Thanks Antares686.

We do not have a space crunch issue. My focus is to improve performance and just wanted to see if a change from char to varchar would improve...

Our experience...

Just like some of the others have reported, it did not hurt performance to lower the memory may be 5 to 10% less than the max. It has added more...