A couple of suggestions:

1. Don't query the same table twice if you can get both results in one pass

2. Group the "many" side of a one-to-many relation before joining

3. Compare...

The description-concatenation function could be:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.ufnConcatDescription (@number as varchar(30))

RETURNS varchar(8000)

AS BEGIN

   DECLARE @varDescription varchar(8000)

   SET @varDescription = ''

   SELECT @varDescription = @varDescription + dbo.cm3ra4.[description] + char(13) + char(10)

   FROM...

To select, for example, the 4th "page" of 10,000 records you could use:

SELECT * FROM (

   SELECT TOP 10000 * FROM (

      SELECT TOP 50000 *

      FROM Customers

      ORDER BY...

One database should be manageable with Enterprise Manager.  You could still use my steps for the final migration (single user, final backup, then multi-user readonly) through Enterprise Manager.

Assuming you have multiple databases to migrate and a limited maintenance window, trying to use Enterprise Manager is risky unless you enjoy trying to work quickly under pressure with no mistakes. ...

A tool that would display DB info/tables/relationships

I need something to generate very basic reports

I've got users who insist on linking Access to exported text files (because that's how they did it 10 years ago), instead of linking to exactly the same data in...

A case of rampant curiousity, I understand the symptoms.  It's an interesting enough question that I attempted a web search or two, but came up empty.

If you're under the impression that this is some kind of a permanent setting, it's not.  The rollback option only applies to the ALTER DATABASE statement it is part of.  Both WITH...

Again, I don't know the query for that, but it raises some other questions.

Did you issue the ALTER TABLE yourself, and forget what the time limit was?  I hope not,...

I don't think SQL Server is going to have any idea what to do with a REFCURSOR object.  I'm guessing because I've never worked with Oracle, but it sounds impossible.

I...

Certainly caution in letting users write ad-hoc queries is warranted, but is there some inefficiency built into Access that makes it a bad idea?  Wouldn't the same users be able...

I am not aware of any way to tell the server to rollback a transaction at some point in the future, usually when an error occurs that requires a rollback...

There's a big gotcha lurking in the table-rebuild script generated by Enterprise Manager.  It uses transactions, but I believe the whole thing is running in some outer transaction that is...

I feel I should clarify that my post was about the general case of when the server won't start because it can't find a required system database (other than master). ...