If you are a creationist then the chicken.  If you are a Darwinian then the egg.

I'll play devils advocate and say that the trick questions are more relevant because it...

I don't think replication is the way to go on this. 

If you are doing stats analysis then this, plus your comment about copying files, suggests that your dataset is...

I'm afraid it doesn't help.  These are precisely the steps I am taking in any case.

sp_attach_db reports that model has been successfully attached, but it is lying!

I'm not sure if you gain anything with small VARCHAR fields because the nature of a VARCHAR is that it needs to store its start and end point.

A VARCHAR(3) could...

The minimum system requirements suggests that you can but I am not sure about the qualification they put about running VC++.NET.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/sysreqs/default.aspx

I seem to remember there are some additional issues...

You can also use DBCC ERRORLOG to achieve the same thing

Given the simplicity of the SQL I would simply duplicate the query on the other side of an IF.

I've got something similar in some of my procs, but I have...

See the locking comment above.

If you have some down-time in your schedule then do the rebuild.  If you don't then you are stuck with defrag.

I would do the update statistics...

I have a utility stored procedure but I tend to use DBCC DBREINDEX rather than the defrag.

The procedure also updates the statistics for all tables.

If you exec usp_UpdateStatistics then it...

If your client software has to run a SELECT on your view then it will be slower than if your client simply executes the procedure.

I don't know if it is...

Are they exactly the same stored procedures that you run in QA and via jobs?

If they are that rules out old query plans and a need for recompiling your procs.

My guess...

The CONVERT statement should be

SET DateOfBirth =CONVERT(SmallDateTime,DOB,1)

This is because you are converting text to a date.  The final argument identifies the string as being in mm/dd/yy format.

To display it in...

Char is fixed length and will always take up 6 characters.

VarChar is variable length and will take a maximum of 6 characters.

CREATE TABLE #CharVarChar(CharField CHAR(6),VarCharField VARCHAR(6))

INSERT #CharVarChar (CharField,VarCharField) VALUES('A','A')

--Now try

SELECT...

Personally, I would do this sort of calculation at the client front end rather than the database back end but return the records in reverse result order.

I played around with...

exec master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'c:\specialticket.xml'

should be

exec master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'type c:\specialticket.xml'

What you are doing is executing a DOS type command but instead of the output being echoed to the screen it is...