Is there a way for you to log exactly what the application is sending? From your description in your last post I'd suspect that the application is somehow botching...

Thanks guys for your feedback.

Your questions are exactly the questions I have. This is an OLAP/DW system with 4 ETL updates / day so the transactions come in bursts....

The companies with which I work see my resume so know my skill-set. If it's an area where I'm a little weak, I let them know. Research is...

AFAIK, there is no easy route. They're created as SSIS packages so I suppose there's a way to bundle them for install the same as other SSIS packages.

The only...

Without some other way of identifying the date, it'd be your guess.

Is there a date in a table which relates to xyz table? Any historical references at all?

Yeah well, I wasn't going to go there, Jeff. My appetite for worms ain't that big.

Yes, SLA is Service Level Agreement. A backup once a month seems awfully thin even for a reporting DB. Even if you don't have a formal SLA I...

Take a look here:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kalen_delaney/archive/2007/07/16/geek-city-maximum-number-of-row-overflow-columns.aspx

and its follow-up here:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kalen_delaney/archive/2007/10/09/geek-city-detecting-overflowing-columns.aspx

Kalen explains it much better than I could.

Try out all the different options to see what works best for you as it will seriously vary from site to site / server to server / DB to DB....

Patrick,

Keep in mind that most (if not all) of the posters here have full time jobs outside of these forums. Heck, even Steve has other responsibilities. A...

No, I don't have a fast enough disk system. I know this already. It's one of the many things that I have to change. Even worse right...

The eval version as far as I can see (I have it installed on one machine) does NOT include reporting services. The developer edition does. My copy of...

Rough guess based on your description. You'd be better off if you posted the DDL (that's the table definitions).

SELECT TOP1

*

From Table1 t1

INNER JOIN

Table2 t2

On

Table1.id = table2.id

Where type = 'type1'

ORDER...

Although I've not worked with a clustered environment before, I don't see why not.

Also, if you have a development machine with access to the server, you can have...

You should check this out, too:

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/CategoryView,category,Indexes%2BFrom%2BEvery%2BAngle.aspx

In particular, this one:

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2007/10/05/IndexesFromEveryAngleHowCanYouTellIfAnIndexIsBeingUsed.aspx

(Better this time Paul? :hehe: )