You can do something like this:

SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE;

BEGIN TRANSACTION;

DECLARE @NewVal BIGINT = (SELECT MAX(member_id) FROM dbo.member WITH (TABLOCKX))+1;

INSERT INTO dbo.Member (member_id, column list)

VALUES (@NewVal, @Params);

COMMIT;

Do it in one...

It sounds good in theory, but I suggest trying it with a proof-of-concept test. Should be easy enough to test on a simple VM. Then you'll know for...

So far as I know, Group By will require a sort, since it has to put the rows together to do whatever aggregation you're asking for. You might be...

Nope. SQL doesn't work that way.

Look into sp_executeSQL for a better way to do this than EXEC(), but you'll need to use dynamic SQL for that kind of thing.

A disaster is an emergency you didn't anticipate.

Good editorial. Anticipating and preventing problems is key to good DBA work.

Another possible solution:

USE ProofOfConcept;

SET NOCOUNT ON;

IF OBJECT_ID(N'tempdb..#T') IS NOT NULL

DROP TABLE #T;

CREATE TABLE #T

(ID INT IDENTITY

...

SELECT CAST(SUBSTRING(Col, 5, 6) + ',' + RIGHT(Col, 4) + ' ' + SUBSTRING(Col, 12, 8) AS DATETIME)

FROM

(VALUES

('Tue Jun 12 21:00:53 EDT 2012'),

('Tue Jun 12 22:20:51 BST 2012'),

('Wed...

Have you asked for clarification from your employer as to what exactly they mean by the differentiation?

Explain that "DBA", even with adjectives like "Production" or "Project/Development", is recognized as being...

Here's what MSDN says:

Execution context identifier (ECID). The execution context ID of a given thread associated with a specific SPID.

ECID = {0,1,2,3, ...n}, where 0 always represents the main or...

Nah. I wouldn't expect a lot of disagreement on this one. Indexing a 1-page table for something other than data integrity purposes, would be silly.

Insert it into a staging table first.

Is there anything in the file that identifies the rows uniquely? Like a row number or anything like that?

There's a fair amount to consider when consolidating database servers. The two most important things are resource availability, and support issues.

On resource availability, it's pretty obvious. If you...

I may have missed something, but do all the Full backups have to be on the same day?

You mention fortnightly Full backups. You can pile up a couple of...

The index suggestions do that kind of thing a lot.

Go with the combined index, not two separate indexes that are so similar to each other.

For small enough tables, SQL Server will ignore indexes anyway, when creating execution plans, even if you do have them.

If the table ends up growing enough to need one, it...