An index on the Where fields will allow for faster selects, but will still leave you with bookmark lookups (since it has to first find the rows by using the...

Try the clustered index you are proposing on a test copy of the database. Test it out, see if it works okay. If so, use it.

The main thing...

What counters are zero? All of them?

MSDN and Books Online have step-by-step instructions on this.

You might need to commit the insert into saar before you begin the insert into saar2, for this to work.

begin transaction

insert into saar(b) select 1

commit

begin transaction

insert into saar2 select scope_identity(),...

On the show plan thing, there's an article in BOL on granting permission for showing plans:

ms-help://MS.SQLCC.v9/MS.SQLSVR.v9.en/udb9/html/9c18657e-2992-4ee7-ab07-7af3141ec658.htm

On not being able to use the GUI in SSMS to design tables, I've not...

Should be able to add it.

I'm not terribly familiar with the code behind for web apps, having never written one, but I can say that two solutions come to mind from my experience:

1. I...

In that case, I'm going to hazard a guess that the server is slammed during that time. Check for CPU peak/RAM use peak right before that.

Does that get you what you need, or is it still not quite right?

Try both, see which one works faster.

I probably should have commented/explained the code a bit better.

The first part is just creating some sample data to test the code on. I included a tests table, with...

Yes, it is possible, but in most cases, it's a bad idea.

What is the reason to change these numbers?

Here's one possible solution:

;with

CTE1 (Stat, Time) as -- Base Data

(select 'Submitted To X','2008-06-06 12:13:25.450' union all

select 'Submitted To X','2008-06-06 12:13:30.433' union all

select 'Submitted To X','2008-06-06 12:13:38.513' union all

select 'X...

Using IsNull/Coalesce in the Partition By or Order By portion of Row_Number, Rank, or Dense_Rank works. I just tested it.