Sankar - take my rants and raves as just that ... Now for the irony of it all .. I attended a user group meeting which featured Paul Randal of SQLSkills.com and his wife Kimberly Tripp as speakers last thursday evening. They put on an excellent 2 hour training session. Wish your question has been posted on Thursday or a day or a few before, and I could have discussed with him ... oh well. If you get a chance to talk with him, may I ask you to post what he concluded (If Paul agrees to the posting).

For all that has been posted in this forum, let me say your question made me think, and in particular that addition of statistics to the last selection was excellent. After all the question of the day is to make people think and learn and in that your question did a excellent job.

Further I hope that you will NOT stop submitting QODs, but bear with the comments from us nitpickers (those who find insignificant details of something unsatisfactory, often unjustifiably).

Again thanks for a good question.