if your field is defined as varchar(max) then the designer might either:

not know what this is, because it's not VARCHAR(<number>)
know that this is a huge field, and isnt good to search and compare from a performance point of view


see what happens if you make a table with VARCHAR 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 etc... and see if there is a cutoff point for the designer to make the field part of the search.


ps that's one wierd looking opti query. Did the designer do that?
The oracle ones look very different, ORring is done first

__________________
DW1 DW2 DW3 DW4 DNU PQ