You don't have to use it. There's no situation ever...

SQL doesn't order it, that's what people are trying to tell you.

There is no default ordering. There is no concept...

That's the time spend by SSMS rendering the plan, before it runs out of memory (or hits max resultsets)...

No.

No.

Maybe take a read through the search links I posted above.

Or you could just remove the nolock hints entirely and remove any chance of their nasty side effects causing you problems.

See - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidlean/archive/2009/04/06/sql-server-nolock-hint-other-poor-ideas.aspx

Firstly, you didn't answer my question. Previous and next as defined by what column. What column tells me that a row is the next one?

Row number does not force table...

He's asking (afaict) for reasons not to truncate the log. In simple recovery, the log is automatically truncated, so...

Buffer cache hit ratio is a near-useless counter. By the time it shows a noticable drop,...

Best option, no. If management is screaming that 'something must be done', then you can rebuild but it probably won't have a noticable effect (unless the problem was due to...

http://www.google.com/search?q=sql+server+locks

http://www.google.com/search?q=sql+server+latches

Lots and lots of info there

The query took longer than the application's timeout setting.

what are the possible reasons for not truncating...

Define 'previous' and 'next'? Tables have no order, so what column is the one that defines which row is the next row?

And why the restriction against the row number function?

Err.. I think you're missing the point.

WITH NORECOVERY is used...

Since it uses twice the CPU of the first, yes.

Ignore the scan count, it doesn't tell you much of use.