If you want to use the log-shipped database as read-only, you need to use the STANDBY=<file> option in your RESTORE statements (in place of NORECOVERY).  This allows it to recover...

There is no hitch, that will work perfectly.  (Assuming a login of the same name doesn't already exist.)  Creating them correctly in the first place is so much easier than...

I take a different approach to automating maintenance plans.  I create several maintenance plans that do only one thing (Full Backup, Log Backup, and ReIndex).  I then schedule a job...

Are these null values, or illegal characters?

You can try to check the values with IsDate and IsNumeric before doing CInt or CDate.

Function Main()

Dim strSessionID

strSessionID = DTSSource("Col002")

If IsNumeric(strSessionID) Then

  ...

When an identity field is incremented by INSERT, it stays incremented even if the INSERT is rolled back.  From BOL under @@IDENTITY: "The @@IDENTITY value does not revert to a previous...

Maybe I need to use more smileys.

Yes, I meant both of you, but it was not supposed to be a flame.  Sometimes I come off as more serious than I intend.

The original question was why are...

I know that's true of @@ERROR but I haven't seen it with @@IDENTITY.  You're probably correct, but the only way I know of to screw up @@IDENTITY is to have...

The guy asked why a cursor is slower and deserved some facts, not to be told "your understanding is not correct" or "your understanding is wrong".

I may be a cardinal...

I have one guy who can't remember that when you cut-and-paste from Excel into an EM grid you get a trailing carriage return.  So I had to add this check...

There's no special name for that kind of query, but using multi-part object names is called a qualified reference.  For example, see "Qualifying Names Inside Stored Procedures" in BOL.

One huge problem is at the end of the error checks:

    ELSE

  PRINT 'An error has occurred and/or a transaction needs to be rolled back'

       ROLLBACK TRANSACTION

The ELSE only applies to the...

I tried to list some of the obvious reasons why looping through a cursor will be slower than a SELECT, but I forgot to warn you that you risk running...

SELECT can perform some operations on parallel threads, a cursor forces operations to be serialized on one thread.

Cursors consume extra resources on the server and require more overhead.  Creating a...

If the two tables contain different sets of rows, you might want to do a FULL JOIN to get all rows instead of an INNER JOIN.  And you can combine...