I don't know the answer to this, but I did get some good advice at the DevConnections conference in Orlando from a SQL Server developer. He said the only way you can really be sure about your queries is to do performance tests on them. I was kind of surprised to hear that, but he said that queries are more art than science.

You also may want to post this in the SQL Server forum here on the UT. Mike Levy is really good with SQL Server stuff.

>I was e-mailed this from a QA person on a project I'm working on. They use SQL7. I have never setup my Selects like this, plus I don't use standard selects I use ANSI Joins. Is there any validity to the below statement.
>
>
>"I just would like to make a friendly reminder for all developers in order to
>increase performance.
>
>In the Where clause of the Select Statement we should start with Boolean
>expressions instead of joins to reduce searching time.
>
>WHERE
> i.ob_type = '1' AND
> b.ghost_card_flag = 0 AND
> h.card_id = g.card_id AND
> b.card_id = c.card_id
>
>Regards"