Simply querying system tables won't cut it. Check out the sys.fn_my_permissions function which can be used to determine "effective" permissions, meaning it covers permissions inherited by membership in domain, server,...

Just like the 20th century was the period when companies learned the consequences of industrial pollution, perhaps many companies today will minimize their legal exposure and operational expense by not...

Chief Data Officer would be sort of a pretentious title for those small and medium sized organizations that don't even have a designated Database Administrator.

It's unclear why the staff who are mostly "Report Writers" would naturally fit into the DBA team, especially if they mostly maintain reports for a specific business unit like Finance...

If the vendor is stubborn about the configuration, and you have no other choice but to use them, then you can perhaps run their applications and databases inside a VM...