SQL poor stored procedure execution plan performance - parameter sniffing

Question

I have a stored procedure that accepts a date input that is later set to the current date if no value is passed in:

CREATE PROCEDURE MyProc
    @MyDate DATET         


        

Answer 1

One way I was able to get around this problem in (SQL Server 2005) instead of just masking the parameters by redeclaring local parameters was to add query optimizer hints.

Here is a good blog post that talks more about it: Parameter Sniffing in SqlServer 2005

I used: OPTION (optimize for (@p = '-1'))