You shouldn't. They should only need CREATE DATABASE. From the master database you can execute something like this:

GRANT CREATE DATABASE TO [login]

And he/she should be good to restore...

User needs to have CREATE DATABASE permissions... add them to the dbcreator server role.

DECLARE @id VARCHAR ( 20 ) -- or whatever datatype your id is

SELECT @id = ID

FROM table

WHERE Cost = @cost

AND Preferred = @preferred

... (etc)

IF @id IS NULL

...

Well the function info in BOL says it returns a varbinary(8000). You need to return it to a usable character string in order to make sense of it. ...

Try changing your read data script to this:

OPEN SYMMETRIC KEY MySymKey DECRYPTION BY CERTIFICATE MyCert

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR, DecryptByKey(col1)) FROM table1

Let me know if that works...

You might consider using linked server connections then and dynamic SQL to specify the servername. I've even seen scripted sp_addlinkedserver commands, however that can get a pretty hairy pretty...

In 2005 Enterprise Edition you can use the REBUILD WITH ONLINE = ON option to rebuild your indexes without taking them offline. I've really like it.

Other than that you...

I followed the very good writeup at this location:

http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/knight_reign/archive/2005/07/06/16015.aspx

Works fine for me.

Initially it looks like you're trying to join STUDENT_SID to INVOICE_SID... is that what you're intending? In any case, you're better off using a join than a subquery,...

Noel, I avoid using either for production applications. 😉 On the off-situation where I have had to use dynamic sql I whitelist any text-based input.

And no, my example...

I'd take dynamic SQL any day over cursors... 😉

You shouldn't need to use a cursor actually if you use the syntax I had above... except I left something...

What permission do these accounts need to have which is restricted only to dbo?

Rather... (going a little too quickly)

exec sp_msforeachdb 'select * from ?.dbo.sysobjects'

it replaces ? with the name of the database.

Use sp_msforeachdb... Example:

exec sp_msforeachdb 'select * from sysobjects'

Check out RESTORE VERIFYONLY in BOL.