Seriosly, this is way to big a topic to be answered in a post. Simply saying "customer feedback" is not nearly enough information to begin designing a database. You need...

That really depends on the system. Most of our systems work just fine with the sampled statistics update, but we have a few tables on a few systems that need...

Also, make sure you look up the right way to create a user, CREATE USER. A lot of our 2000 scripts were using sp_grantdbaccess, which will create a user, but...

An index on Registrationno will help more if it's a clustered index. If it's a non-clustered index, the SELECT statement will force a key lookup either against whatever clustered index...

I don't know. I got it from our server admin guys. They handle all the software versions, etc.

That's wild, but as you say, at least you got a result. I'd be happy with a result, even a sub-standard one. Actually, I'd be happier with a sub-standard result....

It's on Connect. If you want to confirm it or track it, go here.

Nope. No recommendation from that query either. I haven't found a query yet that the silly thing will recommend and index for.

I'll post something on Connect now.

Oh, since I violated the rules with the first post, let me show my query:

SELECT soh.Freight, soh.SalesOrderNumber

FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh

WHERE soh.SalesOrderNumber LIKE 'SO' +...

OK. A little more information. According to BOL, the DTA won't provide recommendations unless:

The table has been selected to tune (it is)

The table has more than 10 pages of...

Yeah, that might be the place to go.

I found a clean place on the wall. I'm going to do a few more bashes first.

Similar.

I know a number of other ways to fix the queries myself. I need to see the bloody DTA do the work.

I tracked down a bit of sample code...

I wouldn't say you need to replace VBS with PowerShell. Different critters really.

I'm just getting started learning Powershell. It's installed automatically with SQL Server 2008 (just run sqlps.exe) and Windows...

I thought BETWEEN was sargeable and >= <= was not. I just did some tests. I'm wrong... again... I'm going to stop posting now. That's way too many errors.

Take a look at the systems tables. sys.indexes, sys.index_columns will get you a long way there.