Hi Mike

Thanks for the response.

No, this problem cannot be reproduced in another database.

We installed SqlServer 7.0 onto another box and restored the database to it. The problem can be reproduced on the new box. This indicates to me that the problem is with the database in question as there is no problem with SqlServer and there is no problem running the query on another database.

However, when looking at the tables involved, there appears to be no problem with the data. Did I mention that syscolumns displays the correct columns?

This also seems to be isolated to a few tables and not the entire database. We have discovered that the problem "seems" to be related to the use of subqueries. Although not in every case that a subquery is used, but the "missing" column seems to occur when a subquery is used. We have even managed to make a "missing" column appear by rewriting the query.

I checked Microsoft's Knowledge Base, but didn't find anything related to subqueries. However, I didn't really expect to since the use of subqueries is throughout the system.

This gets more bizarre, the more we dig into it.

Keith