Does it have to be pasted in an entire string, or can it be constructed? Something like:

DECLARE @Text nvarchar(255)

SET @Text = N'???????? ?? ????? ????????, ??????? ??' + N'...

I suffer from chronic hip problems (definitely exacerbated by sitting continuously for more hours that I should) - that in turn lead to back & neck problems. So long...

This system doesn't have many ad-hoc queries, reporting is a minor aspect of the day-to-day use. What is there is actually highly consistent, does a lot of data manipulation...

"meaning that there is a benefit to adding it"

Not really. SQL usually wants stats on anything that "might" have benefit. It wants the stats on the data distribution...

After doing more reading on selectivity, I think i understand more, but am still not entirely sure of how to address my third case.

Since stats are used to calculate the...

There is probably a better way, but try something like this

MAX(CASE WHEN fieldname = 0 THEN NULL ELSE fieldname END) - this will get you NULL if there were no...

If the rows without data are always 0, try using SUM

I may be missing something but sounds like you want to select the records where the Thing ID is the passed in value and (the CaptureID is 1 or the...

For some objects, you have to use methods like a MoveLast before total counts are updated, after moving to the last record in the set a count properity is usually...

The values for the rowcnt in sysindexes is not always accurate - you have to make sure that stats are up to date to use that value. I have...

Thank you for the additional information, but I already have a very solid understanding of TRY-CATCH structures and really am not asking about employing them.

What I am asking...

I have read that. It is a bit different then what I am after. My focus is on being able to query to retrieve the text of the...

Its not just procedure names that should be capitalized properly and prefaced with the owner/schema to optimize cached plan re-use. The tables referenced within the proc also should have...

Yes, it is possible to run and maintain hundreds of DBs on a server where all are used by the same application code - I have worked on a system...

You cannot store multi-byte data in single byte string data types. But you can store data for multiple languages that only require single byte data in one column. ...