> Let me try to shed a little light on this problem.

<snip>

Ann, your clarifications are always appreciated!

I have reworked our home-spun 20 "digit" GUID and converted to Base36
and brought it down to length 13 - so this is a good candidate for a
Char(13), my "new" db is Charset default to Win1252, and my PK and FK
domains are using Charset ASCII explicitly.

These old eyes and what's left of the grey matter behind them are
slowly starting to see the light!! ... but if you have any further
suggestions, I am all ears! :)

Many thanks,
--Raymond