Hugo Kornelis looks at another execution plan operator:
The Merge Interval operator reads dynamic seek range specifications, checks to see if their specified ranges overlap, and if so combines the overlapping ranges into one new range.
One typical use case is for a query that uses multiple BETWEEN specifications, connected with OR. When these ranges overlap, they must be combined into a single range. This saves performance, but more important is that it prevents rows that satisfy both range specifications from being returned multiple times. When the boundaries of the BETWEEN are given as constants, the optimizer analyzes for overlaps and combines ranges if needed when compiling the query. But when the boundaries of the BETWEEN specifications are only known at run-time (variables, column references), the Merge Interval operator is used for this task.
Click through to see how it works.