• From my observations (my role is only "advice from a distance" for our larger developments), schema are simply not used. Business areas of the model are split into separate databases which results in a mess. Administrators, developers and users (those directly querying the databases) never have easy access to the big picture. I don't see this changing anytime soon because of the way large developments are run. Maybe if there was a "SQL Server architect", as opposed to generic architects who are invariably only slightly aware of any product-specific features. The people who are most aware of "features" such as schema sadly don't get much of a say in a big project.

    I still like separate databases for staging areas, where all or most of the tables are truncated between loads. The danger with schema becoming popular is that you'll get people deciding they are the answer to everything.