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.

It doesn't answer the question, but you can double click on the line next to the column and it will expand to the full size for you. A tiny bit...

Books online recommends not placing objects in Master. I'd recommend against it too.

Truth is, you can put objects there. You'll have to be much more careful about backups. You might...

Do you mean you want a script to generate the table? I ask because sp_help does show you the information about the table that defines it.

You could write up...

Thanks. I'm glad it was helpful. I originally wrote the thing when it looked like we had a success. I then went back and added new information to portray the...

The problem is, I'd be telling you how I feel. I have yet to work on a major project using ORM so I can't give you a list of quantifiable...

I don't think there is.

If "most" of your queries require DISTINCT or GROUP BY to eliminate duplicates then, in general terms, you're writing your queries incorrectly or the data design is wrong. While there...

I have to agree. 2 is fine. 1 & 3 are silly limitations. If you're going with pure natural keys, maybe then you never use identity, but if you're just...