Optimize this SQL query for performance I'm trying to optimize the following statement:

'VI'+CAST(month(GETDATE()) AS NVARCHAR)+'/'+CAST(year(GETDATE()) AS NVARCHAR)
+'/00000' +CAST(@number+1 AS VARCHAR)


The statement produces a value like VI1/2011/000002 if the @number parameter is 1. 

I would like to optimize this in terms of removing redundant cast statements and providing an efficient way to concatenate the strings and integers.
No shortcut at all, there is no elegant string concatention in SQL Server

You are mixing varchar and nvarchar though: datatype precedence means the entire expression will be nvarchar.