excellent... I think I know who can help me with that. Thanks for your help.

no server settings are not the same.Install files for East Asian Languages is installed on the server that is showing the data - I am just trying to confirm that...

database collations are the same

Bhuvnesh's suggestion seemed to of worked.

Using a temp table rather than the table variable speeds the query by upwards of 9mins

it only take 9 seconds now.

thanks all!

I have added the indexes it mentioned in the xml plan. THe query ran well initially but I have tried it the following day and it is back to the...

Ok you got me on that.

Is there any disadvantage to let your data file grow continously? maybe fragementation

3 files approx 60gb each.

easy maintenance mainly - e.g if i ever need to move to database detach and reattach is easier.

Performance is another concern even though i have no...

Haha.. yes they are using sp_executesql quite a bit.

thanks.. so how can I decrease the parsing time of my queries if I cannot configure plan cache memory - would decreasing my buffer cache allow more room for plan...

thanks everybody.

am I right to assume you cannot get support for sql server 2000 SP4 now unless you have paid for it?

Is that the only way? I would like to keep the developers off the server if I could help it.

thanks Gail- that was quite informative.

in management studio you should be able to save query results as a csv file by right clicking on the results. This should be accessible in excel.

I did this once with sql to check my permission and logins transferred correctly from one server to another.

SET @mySQL = 'select [name] from [' + @InstanceName + '].[master].[sys].[databases]...