Thanks, I was messed up trying to use square brackets rather than round and kept getting an error, but it works now. I think this will get me what...

Understood, I've already re-written the stored proc in question to use a set based solution. The problem is the person who hired the contractor is not a SQL programmer...

Thanks all for the input. I ripped out the UDF and called the logic inline, mostly hacking from Stefan_G's sql example. That took the runtime from 10 hours...

Attached are the graphical execution plans for both prod and dev

query is running right now, when it finishes tonight, i will post the graphical exec plan.

Below is a link to the execution plans & io stats for both dev and prod (as well as temp table definitions and the statement that is at the root...

Thanks for all of the replies.

To summerize responses to all of the posts:

- The production server has little activity outside of the 3AM to 7AM hours. I'm running...

Yes, dev databases were restored from prod backups.