By the way - who are the "they" you two are beating up on (the ones who lose interest in good programming when it doesn't "fit their views")?  I must have...

I guess you lost me at "set-based".  Your computation, although very elegant and incredibly efficient is not set-based at all.  As a matter of fact - I'd venture...

disk defragmentation is effective no matter what architecture you're on.  disk striping and all RAID configs work better when files are in fewer, bigger chunks.  Minor fragmentation won't affect your...

And - don't forget to defragment your DB and log drives. Ideally, do it during offline times if your org has those things. If not - DisKeeper can...

Keeping in mind TheSQLGuru's points about data distribution, if you ARE spreading your inserts/updates, although rare - it's not an entirely impossible number to justify.  For example if you have...

create it in user DB. 

Actually - you usually WANT your keys to have no "other meaning" to the user community.  A "primary key" that a user can change/affect is a relational integrity update problem. ...

This is now restricted to very specific versions of visio (I think the one that comes with VS2005 Team Edition).  VS Pro no longer has the ability to push changes...

Well - then build a "wrapper" stored proc, which would invoke xp_sendmail based on the contents of the table.  Disallow said developer from executing stored proc.  Run stored proc from...

SSMS wasn't included in the default install for MSDE.  You have to download separately (or install it from the CD of another version).

SSMS Express is located here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c243a5ae-4bd1-4e3d-94b8-5a0f62bf7796&DisplayLang=en

By the way...

well - keep in mind that you can use an XQUERY syntax within the OPENROWSET statement to pick out specific nodes.  look into the xml.nodes notation in BOL (second article...

if you keep shrinking it it will keep growing.  Be as aggressive as you wish on the truncate - but the transaction file needs some room to do the operations...

you may need a few extra steps if it's important to insert the set you missed into the MIDDLE of the existing identity sequence.  Since Jeff has so nicely started...

Well - you CAN assign him specific rights to execute xp_sendmail without admin privs...  More maintenance to remember on the security side of things.