As for the covering index vs. include topic, I would recommend reading an article by Josef Richburg and the ensuing discussion on the topic. You can find the article...

Start Here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814.aspx

Then check this one out

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966534.aspx

Here is a recommendation by Buck Woody (MS Employee knows his stuff)

http://blogs.msdn.com/buckwoody/archive/2009/08/26/sql-server-best-practices-disk-partition-alignment.aspx

Another one by Denny Cherry (higher level disk config)

http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/Optimize-disk-configuration-in-SQL-Server

For the tempdb questions, I recommend you check out Kimberly Tripps blog. You can find a link to her blog in my signature. Browse her articles on tempdb.

As...

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SFOp

Are you simply referring to the IO performance related to constant log growth or the log file filling up?

If you switch to full recovery, you must enable transaction log backups...

Hey Steve, I just saw a post from SiteOwners and see that they have 10,000+ pts. We don't see them in the points shakedown. Why is that? ...

I use RSS for the blogs that I try to follow but not any of the forums. I rely on emails and then flip through the forums periodically.

I will...

Now that you know which report it is, I would check the SQL in the report and optimize the TSQL as well as tables and indexes for the report.

One possible...

Thanks for updating us on the situation.

You're welcome.

I have updated that last script again. I posted information about it on...

Is there anybody else at the playground now that I can come out to play?

PaulB-TheOneAndOnly (4/13/2010)

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As pointed by Jason an Oracle person wrote the question.

In the Oracle world a explicit cursor is a cursor you define in the "declare" section - this is pl/sql...

Suresh Kumar-284278 (4/13/2010)

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Thanks Jason.

It was one of the questions I got when I got assessment call in my company (our company does assessment for employees every year).

One more...

Trey Staker (4/13/2010)

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Speaking of funny things; My boss in our meeting today passed out the swag from sales people that have visited him in the past year or so. ...

jcrawf02 (4/13/2010)

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I was flying back from Texas on the 1st, and the pilot told everybody that the airport was closed due to an emergency, and we were diverting to Dayton...