Well I'm 'sort' of glad that it's not just me that finds it very strange!

I'll try to provide the TVF tomorrow.

Of course, I agree to stay away from MLTVF -...

I'd already tested with all the multi-line comments in a single comment block - still runs long.

I added your example, lots of comment blocks - still runs long.

Here're the execution...

Yeah...certainly 'witchery' of some sort.......

It also appears that if I enter 'more' lines of comments, the query runs longer!

Of course, the 'executable' part of the query is identical, but SQL...

Thanks Brian, it looks like I need to do some further investigation.

Unfortunately the previous dba has now left the company.

Being relatively new to the role myself, I need to learn...

I was aware how to do it manually, for individual databases, but I wanted a way of automating it.

Either automating it for individual databases - in which case I would...