Rebuilding an index updates the statistics associated with that index. It does not update any other statistics on that table....

Depends. Is there a process still restoring the DB (or rolling back the restore)?

Easiest way, as I said, is just to restore again. Drop that DB or restore over...

Nope. A switch of recovery model does not disconnect users.

Is it possible that he took the database offline? Set it to single user or restricted mode?

One thing first. Run this and see if there's any change in the exec plan or IO stats.

UPDATE STATISTICS Payments WITH FULLSCAN

The message in the error log was expected. Restoring a database does clear a couple of caches, so anytime you do a restore you will see three similar messages.

Best thing...

Please post query, view definition, table definitions, index definitions and execution plan, as per http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/

Drop a different connection? So from one session terminate another?

KILL is what you're looking for. It's the only thing (other than a shutdown) that can terminate someone else's connection.

Edit: Taking...

What kind of replication?

What do you mean by 'written to disk'? SQL writes changes to memory initially. They're written to disk in a checkpoint operation on a regular basis.

The other question to consider is whether you can afford Enterprise Edition. It's not exactly cheap.

Three words: Beware SQL Injection.

You and me both. I'm probably working right through the holidays on a combination...

Both DBCC INDEXDEFRAG and DBCC SHOWCONTIG are deprecated on SQL 2005, should not be used in new development and will be removed in a future version of the product.

The replacements...

Then consider table partitioning if this kind of delete is a regular operation. If you get the partition function and column appropraitely configured, a massive delete can be done as...

Users can access the DB while it's in bulk-logged recovery. No limitations on that.

You missed a part of the page:

However, if data loss is unacceptable, to prevent data loss,...

See this site for all cert-related info. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/certifications.mspx

Please don't use polls for normal questions.