http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssqlisv/archive/2008/10/31/sql-server-2008-new-binary-hex-string-conversion-functionality-can-dramatically-improve-related-query-performance-by-orders-of-magnitude.aspxIn previous SQL Server releases it wasn’t possible to convert binary data to string characters in hex format directly, because SQL Server did not have a built-in Transact-SQL command for converting binary data to a hexadecimal string. The Transact-SQLenTelligent Evolution Platform Developer Build (Build: 5.6.50428.7875)http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssqlisv/archive/2008/10/31/sql-server-2008-new-binary-hex-string-conversion-functionality-can-dramatically-improve-related-query-performance-by-orders-of-magnitude.aspx#9027476Sat, 01 Nov 2008 02:26:59 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:9027476Jose<p>I like that sql 2008 has support for converting binary into hex strings, that's great !!!, however i still wish it would also support operations on varbinary columns like BITWISE AND/OR/XOR, do you know if that is in the plan for future?</p> <p>Also the last 2 queries in your post got me thinking a little bit.</p> <p>Looks like the &quot;WHERE&quot; clause in the query was first converting a varbinary field into a string then doing the comparison, and that conversion is ging to be done for every row in the table.</p> <p>I think it would be more performant to convert once the string to match into a varbinary variable, then use the varbinary variable to use in the select statement to compare direclty varbinary with varbinary, or is it not possible to do that with varbinary fields?</p> <div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9027476" width="1" height="1">