Having encountered some pretty poor third party apps on sql server ( and some even poorer concepts of indexing )

I'd suggest you run sp_updatestats and dbcc updateuage(0) against your database....

cool!  So are the versions and sp's identical for sql server, o/s, mdac on both servers? Are you using the same client to run the query against both servers?

Are your...

There are a number of system variables which hold the current user identity, used_id  etc.  search in BOL and add that to your trigger.

yup - you have an implicit transaction - always a strong chnace of locking.

Do you mean you are suffering from blocking? If so you need to analyse the locks being...

your best bet is to look out for solid quality learning and such

http://www.solidqualitylearning.com

http://www.sqlskills.com

and see if these people are running courses.

Microsoft provide a number of Technet and msdn events...

Resolved this now - it appears to work as expected in 2005 - I shall write it up shortly.

Just to sure you are aware that shrinking mdf and ldf files will increase the likelyhood of file level fragmentation.

Note that shrinking a mdf file will tend to increase the...

It sounds like it may be the import process that is at fault rather than the server -

a rule of thumb says max 20% in hardware, 80% tuning in...

cool ! never liked pin table anyway < grin >

Raid 5 is pants for data writing for a database. You may get the most disk space for the spindles but at a poor performance. btw splitting filegroups across an...

There's an article about sata disks in this months sql server magazine.

I think, but may be wrong, that sata/ide disks and controllers do not support the correct standards for maintining...

whilst I think pinning tables is a bad idea - if a table is used frequently it will be in cache anyway - you can't pin a view as it's...

Have you actually checked that the backups are good - 'cos that's what I'd do first. I'd also check the sql and event logs just in case you're running low...

You can sort of limit the usefulness of EM by making some changes on the databases :-

think carefully about this first , and test thoroughly and document 100% .

Assuming all...

if your log files are getting too big, you need to back them and/or maybe put the database into simple recovery ( I assume you're not on a production system...