be wary of the sql2k index tuning wizard - use it as a guide by all means - but don't take it's recommendations as gospel. I'm told the 2005 advisor...

You probably need some sort of interaction skills, but social skills ? As a former colleague once said, I work with them but would I want to go down the...

Nice article Steve, I actually fail to be amazed now on how many ( interviewed ) dba's wouldn't get past some of your points - I won't go into what I've...

I've never encountered any problems with time travel on sql server, here in the UK we have our sleep patterns interrupted twice yearly.

I've used SQL Diagnostic manager since around 1999 ( in different owned guises and in different client sites )

It's an excellent tool for the DBA who needs some background...

I don't understand the question - different apps may well recommend a "size" for the database they use, however there cannot be a recommended size, it's all a matter of...

I've found indexdefrag isn't quite as useful as one might expect ( in sql 2000 ) I'd suggest you try using indexrebuild for the table - your other option is...

I'm pretty sure you need another trace flag, either 1205 or 1206.

When I last used trace flags to track deadlocks I used 1204,1205 and 3605 - you get a lot...

Actually the IF ELSE solution can be problematic too unless you cause the proc to recompile on each call.  The plan created for one IF clause may not be good...

Just be warned that this approach does not guarantee unique values, it is possible for multiple users to get the same value, I think Itzik Ben Gan wrote some stuff...

You can get performance improvements by disk partitioning, assuming that you still have a resonable amount of physical i/o?

w2k3 will go to 64Gb ram so that might be one improvment. ...

There's some interesting points about dirty reads -- 

http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson/archive/2006/11/10/1280.aspx

How about qualifying what you're asking a little more so we can help?

This discussion keeps coming up and lots of misconceptions will no doubt be cast far and wide.

Note that the points raised concerning table variables were not covered in the article,...

you only use the maxdop statement to limit parallel plans. If you want to use parallelism don't include a maxdop statement, I'd assume maxdop=0 will use all, but not necessarily...