I have to say, that's not a shape for an execution plan that I've seen before. Like the others have said, concentrate on the scans. You're missing JOIN predicates which...

File groups, I'm working on. Several people have asked the same question. I'll post something as soon as I have a complete story.

Custom reporting, since these properties are collected just...

As GSquared pointed out above, table variables work in a similar fashion. Statistics aren't maintained on them (except when there is a primary key) so the optimizer always assigns them...

A fine idea. I'll have to try that. Thanks.

Of course the next thing you should worry about is stacking all the fixed length, non-nullable fields at the front of the page... There's a lot of things you can...

Glad I could...

I don't see the attachment.

I'll bet you're working with a table valued function, probably a multi-statement function instead of an inline. Right?

If so, the optimizer doesn't and can't know what...

You'll have to do this from outside TSQL. I've done it two ways. First, write an app in .NET that opens threads and makes DB calls. It works, but it's...

Enormous topic. I'm just getting going with Reporting Services myself. Short answer, SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio. Long answer... This is the book I'm starting to read.

OK. That makes sense. I'm also not surprised it works like that. Thanks for the input.

Another guy just asked for something similar over in the Development forum. I had the same answer for him. I kind of thought it might be possible in CLR. Is...

The performance increase is pretty small in most cases, but it is there. It really depends though, if the data is fixed length, you should use CHAR/NCHAR for it. If...

Honestly, that's a tough one.

Best approach I can recommend is to establish a very tight discipline around your main production builds. They should only be done by a script that...

Oh yeah, this is a major SQL Server tool if you can put it to work. Talk to Tom LaRock some time. He's gone way past where I am currently...

That's what I mean when I say you have to learn how to work with the tool. I generally type 'SELECT * FROM' and then start building the FROM clause...