Code maintainability and coding speed come in way behind data quality, or they should.  The most maintainable code is worthless if you don't have good data.  Besides the more the...

What you are trying to do will not work.  SQL Server does not provide for any type of declared constraint across databases including schemabinding.

"I think a data store is just that, and there is a lot more advantage in running business code under com+ and j2ee."

I suppose you think an F-15 is just a...

As a recovering Oracle DBA myself, I can sympathize.  The differences between Oracle and SQL Server can be really bewildering at first.

There are several very good reasons that those who know what they are doing will continue to use stored procedures.

Performance.  Although SQL does have the capability to cache the execution...

Restricting the growth of the log file will not adversely affect performance.  However, you have to walk a fine line between the frequency of the log backups and the size/frequency...

From your description it sounds like you have your work cut out for you...but if you want to get rid of the extra log file, you can simply delete it...

I would recommend against trying to restore master for that purpose.  If the logins are all you want check out the following KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;246133&Product=sql2k

The largest table I've ever BCP'd was about 35Gb and it worked fine.  I'm not aware of any size limitiations within BCP itself.

It's quite simple really, I don't want to do a full backup every time I modify a job or DTS package etc... plus msdb contains the history of all the jobs.  I...

exec sp_msforeachtable "truncate table ?"

would be the proper syntax.  I didn't tell you to use this for two reasons. 

First that procedure is undocumented and thus unsupported...

Unless you cut and pasted the DELETE statements into the query window and then ran them, you are fine.

P.S. make sure there is a space between the DELETE and the...

Just switch to the database in question and run the statement that I posted.  It will not actually perform the DELETEs but it will generate the DELETE statements for each...

That depends on whether you have any foreign keys and/or triggers.  If you have neither, then a simple sql generating sql statment will generate the script you need.

SELECT 'DELETE '+...

Did you define the job step as an Operating System Command (CmdExec)?  If so, change it to a T-SQL Command and just use

xp_cmdshell "fc c:\temp\counts1.out c:\temp\counts2.out > c:\chicmpre\result.out"

I don't...