Those aren't official Microsoft Standards, they're blog posts by two MVPs.

Have you tried downloading RC0? It's the latest publicly available pre-release version. AFAIK, the CTPs have hardcoded expiry dates in them. It makes sense as they are just for testing.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=35f53843-03f7-4ed5-8142-24a4c024ca05&DisplayLang=en

To be a bit more specific, when I'm considering indexes, what I will do is create the index that I think may be useful (perhaps one on a foreign key),...

Depends. Maybe...

Then that should have only affected your local machine, not the server.

Selects are also classified DML statements. DDL are data definition statements, things like create table,...

The first step to solving deadlocks is finding the cause. Two ways to do that, you can set up a trace and monitor the deadlock graph events, second you can...

SQL defers to the OS for knowing date, time and timezone. You can't set it within SQL Server.

Why do you think it's related to the buffer pool?

You increase the buffer pool by increasing the amount of memory allocated to SQL server. The amount of memory specified by...

Shrinking databases is not recommended at all, not just shrinking of TempDB. Why are you shrinking your databases every day? If you're not rebuilding all indexes after the shrink you...

Has anyone dropped or changed an index?

Are any of the indexes fragmented?

Are the statistics up to date?

What does the execution plan of that query show?

A clustered index scan is a table scan. It's a full and complete read of all of the data pages in the table. You see the operation as a table...

Preferably an index seek. An index scan isn't that much better than a table scan.

Most of the time I prefer a nonclustered index, but there may be some cases where...

Dependencies are entered when dependant items are creates. So if you create a stored proc that uses a particular table, when you create the proc, the relevant entries are added...

You don't need any proof of experience to write or to get the cert.

How are you studying for the exam if you don't have all the relevant experience?