Everyone else has nailed it. The one other thing you might consider is using NVARCHAR(MAX) if you are potentially storing more than 50 characters. Well, more than 4000 in this...

Here's Microsoft's Life Cycle Support page. Here's the SQL Server 2005 page. We've got to 2011. Which isn't that far off.

You can't. SQL Server doesn't support cross-database referential integrity enforcement through the DRI statements. You can set up a triggers, one to check the child table in the event of...

Do you mean something like this:

SELECT...

FROM...

WHERE...

ORDER BY CASE WHEN @MyVariable = 52 THEN Column1

WHEN @MyVariable =...

It doesn't sound like you need to worry about page splits.

I've seen situations where dropping the index and recreate it work better and I've seen places where it made things...

Short answer, it depends. If the data comes in ordered the same was as the index you'll minimize the amount of work the index has to do as it inserts...

You should look to use the TOP (1) with an ORDER BY statement. You can modify the ORDER by to get a descending value, going from highest to lowest, by...

Native speakers of any language talk much faster than non-native speakers. Ask him to slow down a bit too. That usually helps.

Do you mean delete data from the column? You don't mean the end-users of the app have DDL privileges?

Assuming you want to protect the column... Only allow the users access...

Unfortunately, that can be a serious problem. I know we've passed up on bringing in consultants because their English was so bad that we couldn't understand them.

The key question would be, is he using slang or technical jargon? If he says that something is "cool" then he's using slang to imply that it's good or acceptable...

Writing twice is writing twice. I've found the OUTPUT clause to be a bit more flexible in some ways than a trigger and it has the added value of being...

Open the configuration manager. Click on "SQL Server 2005 Services" on the left side of the screen. You should see a list of services include "SQL Server" or "SQL Server...

Have you run Profiler to watch the code come across? You can at least see what procedure calls are being made with what parameters and then test those same calls...

Since 2008 hasn't been released yet, I wouldn't suggest making that migration now. But since it's supposed to be released in August (assuming they don't slip again), if you can...