To get started, you might want to look at some of the links off the Database Professional Team Center. Specifically, I'd look at the introductory web casts near the bottom...

OK.

They're in there. I'm so used to 2005 (you are posting in a 2005 forum, by the way) that I thought you'd see them. You won't. Here's the answer...

Just out of curiousity, was it an index scan with the original execution plan?

I'm sorry to say it, but you probably need to gather more data. Can you get Perfmon & Profiler in place to see what is occurring when you run these...

Have you looked at an execution plan for the query? Maybe it's already using the index correctly? I wouldn't trust the results from the wizard. I've generally found them to...

Before you go throough the reinstall, be sure that you can connect to it using SQL Server Management Studio. You want to know it's up and running before you start...

You may have to enter it manually, but you could try hitting the Refresh button and seeing if it's in the drop down. Unfortuantely, that's usually a painful choice because...

You just need to create a Data Connection to the databases that you want to access. You can't manage the server from Visual Studio. You need to Management Studio for...

For a development machine? Honestly, I'd just use the defaults. The one adjustment you might want to make is to limit the memory available to SQL Server to 1gb. Otherwise...

And has anyone run a consistency check against it?

Regarding having full data loads in dev & QA. While it does eliminate the issues around testing with poor or incorrect data distribution and size, it introduces a whole slew...

The INFORMATION_SCHEMA views are built in to every database in the system. It's just a cleaner way of accessing the meta-data, the information that describes your database and its structures,...

Excellent feedback. Thank you for that. From everything we were told by the vendors, we should have been dancing through the streets like we were in "On the Town." Instead...

I know where you're coming from there. I try to only work from home if I know the kids are going to be in school.

Hmmm. Same version. Maybe it only works for the data in the column.... Nope. It's working for me. I wonder what's up with that.