I certainly wouldn't recommend creating additional copies of things like zip code lookup tables for each database, but these can be handled by putting them in a common database.  If...

If you absolutely must, you can use the sp_OACreate procedure to instantiate a RegEx object in a T-SQL stored procedure.  You can then access its properties and methods with other...

I would also vote for many databases vs. one big single-point-of-failure database.  Yes there is extra maintenance to deal with multiple databases, but with some effort you should be able...

You will have fewer security issues if you create this as a SSIS package running on your desktop, rather than insisting on doing it in a stored procedure.  A package...

You don't say what attributes you want to store in the table that would require duplicate records and cause a primary key violation.  You are already aware that you can't just...

You can't just say you're going to apply the latest hotfix, if the exact same hotfix comes in two different versions based on build number.  Your answer was the only correct answer...

That most certainly does invalidate the answer.  Hotfixes are now versioned.  How would you define "You only apply the latest hotfix that you want to apply" except by adding that...

Teradata servers A and B may not be able to talk to each other, so you may have to do it through a SQL Server intermediary.

You can use INSERT INTO...

I believe when you say dataset you mean "suck all the data down to the client and convert it to XML", so the extra delay could be client-side processing.  If...

How about a scheduled job on each server that fills a local table once a day with the file sizes, then your aggregation server can just query those tables?

Another alternative...

If there's any chance the user is in other databases you could check them all:

EXEC

master.dbo.sp_MSforeachdb REPLACE

One issue Clifford skipped was that heap tables cannot be reorganized except by truncating and reloading them.  Tables with clustered indexes can be optimized by using DBCC DBREINDEX or DBCC...

Yes, you could use a case function.  Something like:

SELECT a.empid, a.empname

FROM tbl1 a, tbl2 b

WHERE CASE WHEN yearofjoining = '2006' and a.deptno = b.deptno then 1 

    WHEN yearofjoining <>...

The developer may not know it, but SQL Server can do a pretty good job of generating XML from a table all by itself.  I don't know what the "sent...

Maybe you could try using "INIT SKIP" on your first backup of the day, which should tell it to skip checking the expiration date on the existing backup and force...