>> ps don't you find non IT people largely boring ?? 

was a joke - proves a point that many IT people are perceived as lacking a sense of humour!!...

ah! surely you're not using clasic ado ?  This is an ado issue not a sql issue - you need to know how to handle multiple result sets etc. etc....

Yeah I appreciate that you're not a DBA - I'd really advise you to find one!!

Leave parallelism alone - check your i/o's what is the difference between the two...

It's unusual for a plan to change this way, but, changes to the optimiser are not documented which is why microsoft say you should be very wary of using hints....

It might never defrag - you may find it easier to copy the file to another drive/server and then back - for big files this often quicker - could take...

There will be some differences - you can only truly compare if everything is the same - which it isn't. Are the sql server editions and set up the same...

your re-index and stats will create large logs which will also get shipped. If you have a window where users don't connect and the log shipping isn't microsoft then stop...

do it in T sql.

why would you want to do this through the gui anyway? I assume normal T SQL works fine?

But what you're introducing by abandoning strong typing is sloppy coding standards. and sorry Chris but your concept of character storage in sql server is seriously flawed!

You won't get better...

To be honest making changes to server settings to resolve parallelism is akin to removing 6 spark plugs from your V8 to avoid going over 30mph in a built up...

I never quite got my head around the -2 vs 1 , but if all your object calls are prefixed dbo. it should be fine. My testing showed dbo owned...

Not always that easy, I enjoy surfing and sea kayaking but I'm a very long way from the surfing beaches - and then there's always the problem the surf always...

CREATE

TABLE [dbo].[test1] (

[c1] [int]

NULL ,

[c2]

AS

Yeah it's a funny old world. I recommend a diet of strong coffee, choc bars, snacks, fast food ...... but seriously folks .. I think recognising the signs of stress...