note that technically a select is not a transaction as it doesn't change data. Umm 1000 transactions/min ( did you mean minute? ) is not even low volume really and...

Think you'll also find using visual studio against a database will create all those tables - I have successfully removed them over the years without any problems - some software...

Experience has shown that renaming any object may produce "issues" . I've always insisted that a rename is done by a drop and re-create. The use of the GUI is...

I publish such information locally to a web page and then put all the pages centrally.

The issue with using remote calls to collect information is when a server doesn't exist...

I'm just a bit intrigued by the rate, as a mercenary contractor/consultant < grin >  , is this a typical rate for Australia ?

you say you've set up the account ? Replication does this for you. remove the account and try again.

All run locally to database engine?  My local sql is developer, the server was ent edition. In both cases I ran the queries connected locally.

Sorry but I cannot get any...

sorry but I was not able to reproduce what your posting suggests ( sql 2k sp4 ) , I used my local sql server and a high end server for...

You might want to buy SQL Server 2000 performance tuning - ms press , this would give you a good start.

Most counters have to be read in conjunction with others...

nearly there - not local

exec dbo.sp_dropserver oldname   ( wimnt90 )

exec dbo.sp_addserver newname  ( sqlsvr1 )

stop and restart sql service.

Be careful when using a sql server name which is not the...

Yes  - but haven't you just confirmed Steve's conclusions?

It depends if you're run perfmon against a SAN disk subsystem or not?  My experiences have been that the disk queue counters do not provide any meaningful data from a...

I'd just observe that with the adoption of SANs ( and NAS - although I've not used this ) that disk queue and disk time are not very useful.

The only...

I like it - something else I can throw at developers!!! - only joking - good term though!

Paul - agreed , the terms large and small are so relative to yourself and on their own are pretty meaningless!! also depends upon your pipe for the replication path...