Use query analyser. While they run the same code, if the operation takes too long, enterprise manager may timeout and undo the operation. Query analyser doesn't timeout.

It's not the concat that's the problem, it's the variable usage.

If a query uses either parameters or hard coded values, the optimiser knows, at the point that it's compiling and...

In that case, since you're not building up a string, you don't want the quotes. In the first case, you were building up a string to be executed, so the...

If you have queries of the form

WHERE EmpID = @Emp AND DeptID = @Dept, then only one of the indexes will be used. Which one depends on the selectivity...

You've probably seen it in my posts. It's just the way I tend to write. You don't...

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you want.

Please read through this and give me some info so that I can help you.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

If you have log backups occuring you don't need or want to truncate the log. An explicit truncate will break the log chain and prevent restores to a point in...

If you include it in the from and don't do a join, you get what's called a cross join. Each row of the one table is matched to each row...

I'll go stronger than that.

Don't use dumps at all. It's cheating, it reduces the value of the certifications, and if you get caught, your certifications will all be revoked, permanently.

Is the cross join to the State table intentional? If...

Can you post the function, the definition of the tables and the indexes on those tables please.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

In that case, inx1 is unnecessary, since it is a left-based subset of another index.

I do recommend that every table gets a clustered index so maybe thins (NB, without any...

Could you post the query that you'e having problems with please?

Indexes on a table should be based on the queies that will be run against the table. There's no point in having an index on a column if there are...

Triggers are used when you want something to happen when rows are inserted, updated or deleted, regardless of where the data change came from (app, management studio, job,...)

Auditing data...