Absolutely yes. It was my application's requirement (actual number was far above 1800 but with varchar(8000) was the itemcount that your routine could handle and didn't want to change any factor during test).

-No user doesn't want to select ALL accounts but N accounts out of too many thousands of accounts.
-No 1800 selections themselves are unique selection and are the top level parents. One may however need their child records which could be queried on demand or in some other strategy.


OK, I believe you. I've just never seen ANY application where a user needed to make 1800+ selections that were top-level parents, and/or didn't follow a pattern where higher level records could be selected instead.

That is a substantial number of items for an end-user to actually select - but I still question whether a predictive nature exists. I find it hard to comprehend someone physically picking 1800 items today and then 1800 items (that varied from the original set) tomorrow - and I wonder if those are better off being stored in a special selection table in SQL Server.

If you tell me no, that couldn't be done for the requirements you face...I feel awfully sorry for any end user who has to pick 1800 items where no predictive nature or higher-level grouping exists. :)