Apparently, MS used to recommend setting the priority boost on if the server was dedicated to SQL Server.  This has changed since there have been some failures caused on very...

Are you sure about that?  I've never run into a connection limit with DE, but then again, I have never seen a development/QA environment that required more than a few...

I don't see how you can recommend this without knowing much more about the specifics...

It generally makes no sense to repeatedly shrink the log file only to have it grow...

I don't ever use the auto shrink option for production (and very seldom for dev and QA) servers.  There are many things that can affect how fast and how large...

There is most likely no problem at all.

The most common reason for this kind of growth is index rebuilds.  Does this growth occur during a reindexing operation? 

The other most...

The main differences are:

Price -- Dev costs $50 per developer, EE costs much more

Acceptable use -- You can't use DE to run production environments

Installation -- DE can be installed on...

I'd say that depends, but generally you should make some effort to ensure that your salary requirements are at least in the same range as their salary window.

When I was...

For the initial step of importing data from files, I normally want to get everything in the database so I generally create some work tables with varchar datatypes.  Once the...

I VERY seldom shrink the transaction logs.  Generally the log files achieve what I look at as a certain equalibrium (assuming you are doing regular log backups).  The file size...

Using these commands could set you up for a major problem.

Without knowing the particulars of your system I'd say that generally a 2GB log file isn't unreasonable at all. 

Until...

I think I detect some confusion in your question...

The % specified in the autogrow option doesn't have anything to do with the amount of space that is currently free in...

1. The reason the maintenance plans put your databases into single user is because you have checked the "attempt to repair any minor problems" checkbox on the "Integrity" tab.  I...

If the database is set to autogrow then you shouldn't have to do anything.  SQL Server will allocate new disk space when it needs it.  So at least you know...

Multiple data files would only help with latch contention if they were spread across multiple physical disks thereby improving overall IO performance.

There is a fix in SP4 for latch contention...

There isn't one.  About the only solution to your problem is to create a new database with the appropriate files and move the data across.  The allocation would then be...