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...

Andy Warren reviewed a specific performance tuning book on this site. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/reviewofsqlserver2000performancetuning.asp

Brian Kelley wrote an E-Book called "Start to finish guide to SQL Server Performance Monitoring" that I would...

I played around with it for personal interest sake.

CREATE TABLE #tmp( XMLContainer TEXT)

INSERT #tmp

exec master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'type myfile.xml'

Once you have done this then you can use the built in SQL XML...

BOL is talking rubbish.

It should be CONVERT(varbinary(256),password)

I am trying something similar but my servers are in different domains so I cannot use the DTS Transfer logins routine.

BOL says that I can do the following

E. Create a...

It is moving it on the same server.

I'm asking more for curiosity sake than anything. 

As standard practice I use the articles you wrote on moving databases to put the...

That 8000 characters includes white space and some white space characters can break your SQL.

The only problems I have had are when unicode text (which takes twice as much space) gets...

The signature is allegedly the marriage proposal that the actor, Robert Mitchum, made to an actress whose name escapes me.  I think she accepted.

Yes,

I have a stored procedure that has a @choice argument.  Depending on the value of that argument I execute various stored procedures.

The other thing that is possible is to create...

A common mistake is to confuse connections with users.

One connection is automatically taken up with  by SQL Server itself.

If you have EM and QA open then you've just used another...

I think the point at which the "throttle" become noticeable depends on what you are doing with the database.

I've had over 25 users on bog standard Access 2.0 but all...