with regards to locked down environements and open vs closed environemtns, we're trialling the new Policy feature in SQL 2008 so that all dev machines and databases meet a minimum acceptable standard, and that they are configured in the same way that Live environments are.

This includes Collation, Ansi Settings, Compatibility mode etc etc

a weekly inspection of this data gives us a heads up on any potential dev issues from misconfiguration, while allowing the developers flexibility.