>> > There is certainly 1 record in MSG where MSG.ORDER_REF =
>> > '20061108/RAPTEST/RDL611004643'
>>
>> > Why should MySQL not return it for the first query?
>>
>> Probably because your order_ref ends with some whitespace.
>
> Yes, I thought so, but that is not the case. I dumped the whole table
> to a file and I checked. The value _is_ present and it does _not_
> contain any leading or trailing whitespaces.

.... or may be some non printable character(s),
check with:

select length(ORDER_REF) from MSG;

or

use cat -v on your dump file.


Regards
Dimitre