>Jay,
>
>Next you want to eliminate the HAVING clause as HAVING is always slower than WHERE, and what do you get ... the original query with the subselect in it.

Jim --

Again, thanks for the dialog.

I do want to acknowledge that I had an "earth to Jay" moment early on. Steve's original SQL with the wildcards suggested to me that he maintained multiple states in a single record rather than an individual state per record. Hence, my question about the subquery.

His final conclusion, based precisely on your pseudocode, indicates that the wildcards were "noise" which I misinterpreted.

But, in the meantime, I found it helpful to clarify some of my own thought on the subject. Thanks for giving me that opportunity.

Peace,

Jay