Has anyone run into this problem? 

A user creates a gift or constituent Query.

When they run it, the Raiser's Edge locks up while it attempts to process the query (the panels go white and don't refresh anymore). By itself this is normal for large queries. What happens next is not normal.

Back on the main database server running RE, the SQL tempdb file starts to grow out of control. As the query continues to hang and not return results, SQL requests and is granted more and more disk space for the tempdb file until the operating system starts complaining. When most of the disk space is exhausted, the Query finally crashes ending with a SQL error that basically says it's too complex, and cannot get additional page space. This creates a "soft" outage since everyone has to be booted off the server in order to restart SQL and clear out the tempdb file.

It's happend multiple times with different queries. Initially we thought it was because the queries were just too complicated, but last week SQL again ran out of room with a query that had a single criteria and no outputs. Things are getting spooky since now just about any query can bring down the server.

I admit our database is large, but I have to believe that if this is dependent on size alone than non-profits larger than us would have also run into this. Has anyone else ever seen valid RE queries cause SQL to exhaust all disk space trying to run them???

We are running: RE 7.81.1334, SQL 2000 Std Edition, MS Server 2003 

Thanks.

--Paul