I'm farily new at this, but I came across something that really confused me. I'm running MS SQL Server 6.0.

I'm writing a fairly long and complicated algorithim to match records between 2 tables (both of which have some inconsistancies and potential errors, so much checking on a record by record basis is needed).

When I run the code piece by piece in ISQLW, it takes a while, but it runs correctly. When I compile it as an SP, it takes forever. (I don't want to include the code because it is really long). Why would that be? I've indexed everthing correctly and sufficiantly, but even if I didn't, wouldn't it take longer in ISQLW as well?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

TIA,
Scot.