Funny that we both fixed the JOIN as well as putting in the IF.

Well, normally I'd say to stay out of my head, but since you posted first, I'll try...

jlp3630 (9/29/2008)

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Is there anyway to "short-circuit" a query? The following query generates the same "actual execution plan" regardless of the @brand_id value (null or non-null value):

DECLARE @brand_id INT;

SET @brand_id =...

Exactly right.

It also brings up nullability, which should be used as sparingly as you can.

Oh, and files and file placement. Minimum, split the data and the log to two different drives. After that, it depends on the types of drives you're working with, the...

Unless there's a very good reason for it, most tables should have a clustered index. Be sure that, even if the database is normalized, it has appropriate primary and foreign...

I'd suggest running a trace while the events are occurring. Collect the data out to a file. You can then import it back into a table on a different server...

The individual users are validated through AD and the group they belong to. So we only have to give access to the group. It is a trusted windows connection.

You're just more diligent than I am. If I can't get it installed, I toss my hands up & move on. Since I've started working exclusively on virtuals when I'm...

My most recent set of beta testing is with the Visual Studio Team System Database Edition. They've got a new release coming out to support SQL Server 2008, but it's...

Is there a question in there somewhere?

A view is just a query. They can be somewhat optimized, but since they usually don't include much in the WHERE clause, there's little that can be done. So, if...

You might want to get the developers to put their database structures into source control. That way a given development database can be rebuilt from scratch. Further, as they start...

We connect AD groups to roles within a database and assign priveleges to the role. It works really well. We just don't get into managing individual logins.

The major shortcoming to...

I'd suggest Itzik Ben-Gan's Inside SQL Server 2005: TSQL Querying. That's a great source for really learning how TSQL works and how to apply it to a lot of real...

Because you guys are running express, you actually have choices. I've got a machine with at least three versions of express from three different third party apps all running side-by-side...