One possibility:

SELECT TOP 5 *

FROM table

ORDER BY NEWID()

I forgot to mention (in my repost of the lost post) that the rows in each table are inserted as id=1 and text='aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'

SELECT pk_column, LEN(textcolumn) AS textlen FROM tablename ORDER BY textlen DESC

> I was thinking of using hints you mentioned but was not sure whether it is a good idea. Would you recommend them?

If you are still having the problems every...

Argh! I lost a really long post explaining this in detail. Anyway, the gist of the post was that like hoo-t says, rows containing varying size columns are stored with...

It is possible to configure SQL Mail for the server. Then set up a scheduled job that regularly uses sp_processmail to check for new mails and respond to them. I...

sushila, it is not possible to attach only one file of a database that consists of several datafiles. sp_attach_single_file_db is only used for databases that only have one datafile.

Cricketdogger: As...

You can also give Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer a test. Like Steve says, NGSSQuirrel for SQL Server from NGSSoftwareis a great tool. Also take a look at

PostgreSQL is a free and open-source DBMS, but unlike MySQL it is a good implementation of SQL and about as complete as "the big ones". I do not know...

No, not really 24/7, but some days I check in about once an hour between 8AM and 2AM, perhaps with a break around dinnertime.

What do you mean exactly? No, there is no way to have the DATEPART function return week numbers caculated with other rules, but you can do it yourself (like I...

The rules for week numbers are different between different countries. I am not sure which rules are specific for you, but take a look at my article On the...

But SET PARSEONLY requires that you execute a statement (even though it will only be parsed and not executed), and it does not return any resultset regarding which tables are...

Yes, I got a good description of the problem now. A couple of further questions:

Are all of the blocked processes trying to execute the same stored procedure?

Does it take a...

No, there is no "UPDATE or INSERT if not exists" command in T-SQL.