If the dbf table has some kind of autonumber or timestamp field (or one could be added), so your scheduled task can use something like "WHERE {timestamp} > {last run time}",...

The ROUND() function has a little-known third argument that specifies whether to round or truncate.  ROUND(<value>,2,1) would solve the problem better than the code in the article.

The differential backups can be used to initialize the standby database, but there is no need to apply them afterwards.

You're restoring the log backups every 15 minutes, there's nothing in...

You can't set the options on multiple databases in one statement.  But you can set multiple options on one database in one statement.

ALTER DATABASE <db> SET READ_ONLY, SINGLE_USER

  [ WITH...

No, they're both correct statements.

The current realtime state of the data that hasn't changed is, by definition, the same as it was when the snapshot was created. 

A query against a...

Restoring the master database is a different animal.  You can only restore the master database if you started SQL Server in single-user mode, so the normal checks for other connections...

I'm not sure who Leonid is, but over the weekend I realized the script I posted would not work for some dates.  (Tells you how exciting my weekends are.)

Here is...

Converting a datetime to a float gives you a number in days (the fractional part is the time), and floor() will truncate it to a pure date.   You get an error if...

select TheDate,

 dateadd(d, 6 - ((cast(floor(cast(FirstDayOfMonth as float)) as integer) - 1) % 7), FirstDayOfMonth) as FirstMondayOfMonth,

 dateadd(d, -(cast(floor(cast(LastDayOfMonth as float)) as integer) + 3) % 7, LastDayOfMonth) as LastFridayOfMonth

from (

 select...

Substituting the other msdb may work, but you probably want to get the DTS packages out of it so you can put the original msdb back.  You might have maintenance plans,...

Try to find out what table(s) have all this data.  An extra 500MB should be easy to spot.  I looked around at a number of my servers and can't find...

BCP and DTS do not pretend to have reporting capabilities, they are just ways to dump query results to a text file.  I might be tempted to use a script...

You're welcome to stop by any time and troubleshoot my server configuration.

Try to remember that I didn't say to never use ALTER TABLE.  I said that ALTER may have a...

That's a very tiny MAY, in my experience.  I can INSERT/SELECT 15 million rows in minutes on most of the servers I work with, but I have seen ALTER take...

If you have sufficient disk space, copying the data to build a new table may run much faster than updating the existing table.  Obviously it is a lot more work,...