• I approach introducing EM to newbies with both joy and fear.

    Giving 'newbies' access to EM can be a dangerous encounter.

    Something about only having to right click an object , select delete and confirm and 'pouf' data/logic  is gone.

    I have found that once newbies start to use EM they are always using it to return table recordsets... (right click a table... select return all rows... then they start to query using the 'SQL button'...?!?!?)

    This is not a good practice especially if the db tables are part of a production application.  I have seen occassions where someone left EM open that created a lock on a database that prevented a backup job from starting or a sp from executing.  I regularly encounter EM Users (people who do not want to be called 'Newbies' because they now consider themselves DBA's) who do everything in EM.

    EM is a great tool but it is almost too powerful.  It is sort of like giving electricians keys to the nuclear power plant.

    EM has it share of bugs and issues... like refreshing and refreshing. ugh!!  Has anyone ever got the favorites in MMC to work with EM?  Favorites work with IIS and other MS MMC plugins, but EM seems to live by it's own rules in MMC.

    I almost welcome the fact that it will disappear in SQL 2005.