It took some effort and with some help from colleague I came to this fix:

BEGIN TRAN

UPDATE TABLENAME

SET lineno=

(case when len(lineno -12) = 1 then ' '+cast((cast(lineno as int)...

Thanks, but unfortunately that does change the output. 'Funny' thing is that when I run the query

update tablename set lineno=lineno- 12, sysmodified=getdate()

where 1=1

and entry=545554

and type='X'

and lineno=568...

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your reply. The datatype of the field lineno is char(4), null

KR

Thanks again. Learned a lot.

Thank you both very much. Since this issue occurs after migrating from sql 2000 to sql 2008 I suspect the performance issues which were adressed by Microsoft in SQL 2008...

Both (the orignal query and the new proposed query) gave 57 rows.

Sorry, bout that. I checked it now against the actual data. The orignal query only gave back valid data (only numbers). The new proposed query gave the same by first...

Hi,

I followed your instructions. The results are:

Original subquery gives: 69000

Proposed query containing cross apply: 69000,Int.nr.TXT: 69000

So the original query works fine as long at is not part as a...

Hi, Thank you for your response. However the goal is to only retrieve those lines starting with Int.nr.TXT:. I checked the data, all lines have a valid integer after...