One extra point, although the expressions will usually return the same value, there is a difference if there are no rows in the table.

The first expression would return NULL but...

Yes, that's correct. The idea of a copy-only backup is that it is an independent backup and doesn't break the normal chain of full and differential backups, which is very...

I think the...

Yes, if you wanted changes to appear on the dev database in real time or near real time then there are several high availability features that could be used such...

Can you just restore the latest live backup into your dev database when it requires refreshing ?

However that would also copy data as well as stored procs, database permissions etc...

It's not a script as such, but Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Ultimate has a schema compare facility which will do what you want.

You don't need to install anything on...

What is it that are actually wanting to do ?

If you want to script up the database so you can create a local copy why not just download the most...

There shouldn't be any extra issues around indexed views. If you want to create an indexed view on the reporting database then you can do so immediately after the restore.

If you want to clone using the...

We faced the same situation a while ago. The solution we used was to restore the nightly full backup of the OLTP database into a separate reporting database, which was...