I know it is not needed for the vast majority of cases.  I am trying to decide if it would be useful enough to build into a general purpose procedure...

You may find this query useful for looking at index information:

use Northwind

select

      [Table_Index]     = left(rtrim(object_name(a.ID))+'.'+a.name,50),

      a.indid,

      b.index_property,

      Value       = isnull(indexproperty(a.id,a.name,b.index_property),-999),

     ...

“…I wonder as the total number of rows grows is there a break even point where the lack of the Cartesian product of query 1 makes query 2 the...

If the table has an identity column that corresponds roughly to the age of the data, find the minimum ID, and the lowest ID you want to keep.  Then...

Are you sure that you have no duplicates in these tables?  If you do, you could end up with the mother of all cross joins using a join.

VERITAS (and other backup utilities) still do a SQL Server backup “under the covers” with the backup output streamed to tape.

I don’t see any point to the idea of ENUMS; basically, it solves a problem that doesn’t exist.

There is nothing wrong with any of the techniques in...

Change the users default database to master.

I always make master the default database for all users.

Your servers probably have different national language setting.  Probably one is US English and the other is British English.  You can look at the value of @@language.

The windows group does not need to be the database owner, it just needs to be in the db_owner role.

The best this is to make sa the owner of the...

You can use the date table function on this link to load a date table, or you can use it directly in your query.

Date Table Function F_TABLE_DATE:

Maybe they just wanted to know how good you are at making up BS when someone asks you a really stupid question.  Probably a good skill for a salesman to...

I have never seen a backup to a compressed folder take less time than a backup to an uncompressed folder.

If you read the OPs link, that it what it is...

This is fairly normal behavior, since it requires the system to compress the file on the fly.  You may be able to get it to run faster by backing...

If you mean, should a table always have a primary key, then the answer is yes.

A table must have a primary key to be in first normal form.