technically you should normalise and create a lookup table to join against .. vs ... your choice to method is to which is least likely to break your application(s) , which...

with very great care, and after asking yourself if you really want to do this!  If it's a production or critical server then probably you don't.

I'd advise against using autoshrink, this may compact your extents increasing mixed extents and degrading performance, it might also autoshrink at an inconvenient time.

I assume your table has a large...

I guess you have an index on items.type ?  restricting this selection might help .. But .. I bet items.type is a poor index ??

so you could try a composite...

sorry but both temp tables and table vars start in memory - depending upon resource ( and data set size ) each may or may not spool out into a...

yes!   Well actually it depends upon all sorts of things including internal/external etc. etc.

I'm not sure about using two channels with raid 5, I've done this with raid 10 with...

You are correct that the sql server takes the machine name on first install.

A machine name rename does not change the sql server name.

The sql server name does not have...

The various sql elements should belong to the relevent resource group this would I assume include msdtc. ( Haven't a cluster to hand currently to check ) The whole point...

Check out the microsoft ALWAYS ON http://www.microsoft.com/sql/alwayson/default.mspx

this might help. It's really important that people realise that a SAN doesn't give any performance benefits becuase it's a SAN. SAN's assist...

It is the shared spindles that cause the most problems. The main issue I've encountered with SAN's is that I require say, 7 spindles for good performance, with 147Gb disks...

Running queries across linked servers will often likely give you problems, it's not best practice for performance. I believe you may need to use Openquery with pass through to resolve...

In certain circumstances, with more complex views , I've found that indeed the entire select * may be done within the view - not quite as you ask, in my...

select into can cause  locking in a multi-user environment this has and still is clearly documented.

 I don't want to get into silly arguments but don't throw VLDB into a forum,...

Find another job and pass him the management of the Servers.

Did he explain the process by which he arrived at this ?

and what are you supposed to do with the...

You should never user select into . During the population of the temporary table by the select into statement the allocation block in the data file is locked - so...