Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the specifics of the queries, among other things. Temp tables aren't a replacement for joins, they're not an automatic performance improvement.

Again, are you sure that...

Log backups don't shrink the log. They just mark it as reusable.

Please read the article I referenced.

Then, set up regular log backups and do a once-off (not regular, not scheduled)...

Are you running regular log backups? With that size of log file, I suspect not.

Please take a read through this: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administration/64582/

Firstly, are the joins the problem?

And short answer, you don't join tables without joins.

It does not.

I said in my previous post. It should be in the default trace.

Also, taking a DB offline or bringing...

Should be in the default trace. Otherwise ask the other DBAs, it required DB_owner permissions or high server level permissions, so not something that everyone should be able to do.

Someone ran ALTER DATABASE ... SET OFFLINE, or that command is in a job somewhere. SQL won't take a DB offline by itself, someone or some app ran the ALTER...

Just run the create index statements, not much more to it than that.

curious_sqldba (11/12/2013)

So bulk...

If you just replace the ad-hoc SQL with an EXEC <procedure>, you'll get the same information logged as you currently are getting.

Nope. Not unless your bulk load is querying the table first. Stats do not get created or updated unless they are needed to generate an execution plan.

The why is pretty simple. Any function when used on a column makes the predicate non-SARGable, or not usable as a seek predicate. Implicit conversions are same as explicit conversions,...

Unless you create your own logging infrastructure, no. SQL does not keep execution history.

Now, you can create it as a stored procedure and call the procedure from your batch file....

Your sample set is way too small. Everything's fast on 10 rows.

Estimated and actual rows will be the same for the seek and scan, because it's the number of rows...