As a thought - do you have SSRS 2017 installed on that computer already?  If memory serves, you cannot have multiple SSRS's installed on a single instance with newer versions...

Steve - I'd like to touch on your point of:

support UGs (physical and virtual) -  I don't know what goes on here, but I'd like to know. Really, I question...

I agree with Phil here.  100%.  More than 100% if that was possible!

Originally we had a lot of "one-off" SSIS packages that were created for moving data for a very...

1 - An opportunity to meet and learn from experts in SQL and learn about new features in the Microsoft data platform

2 - An opportunity to talk to other data...

As a former UG leader and a speaker, I ran the user group more because it was fun to learn and meet other speakers.  Getting free admission to PASS was...

Powershell and visual basic script.

You also say "C# NET", but really any .NET language (or even non-.NET languages like VB6) can talk to SQL Server.

It really depends on what you...

Technically, you could even bump that down to 1 trigger instead of 2 by having it as a for update AND insert.  Doing it as 1 trigger might not help...

I would start by reading this:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/certification-exam-policies.aspx

Specifically the section about the NDA:

 Why am I required to accept a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before I take an exam?

The Microsoft Certification Program requires candidates...

In the  article you mention PoSH as well, and my tool of choice (despite the bugs I've found and live with) is Powershell Plus Professional Edition (which is...

I think our approaches to index creation/removal are a bit different.  But if it works for you, that's good!

My thoughts though about performance are less about indexes specifically, but on...

Rob Reid - If you have the server running for a week or two and you designed the thing, you should have access to the metrics on the server, right? ...

My first recommendation is not  to use Excel and VBA to pull data from the database (or push it in... I'm a little unclear on what is happening here) but...

I am glad it worked for you!

For me, intellisense has never worked well over a linked server or even cross-database on the same instance.  Sometimes it gives me the list...

My personal preference is to avoid the "all in one" solutions as they often have limited features and updates have a higher chance of introducing bugs in features I use. ...

So, natively I don't think SQL Server has anything like this.  That being said, getting the result you list is not an impossible task in SQL Server.  Quick bit of...