Yep. Another vote for ping. If you can't see it in your network, you can't connect to it. Also, when you ping, be sure to specify a port number that...

I will also reinforce your backup and restore example.  Sometimes system people drive me nuts when they say the whole server is backed up.  That doesn't necessarily protect the...

I think we're back to the original suggestion from Eirikur, an index on your temp tables to assist in filtering that data. The one table #repositioning, says it has 1...

Sounds like a great methodology. Well done.

And, deadlocks are fundamentally a performance tuning issue, so look at the exec plan to be sure there are no tuning opportunities. Then, determine what the deadlocks are exactly from...

I can't say without knowing it's actually hitting deadlocks. Then, it's about the deadlocks encountered. Sorry, no way to know what that is from where I'm sitting.

They're all different and do different things. I'd suggest reading up on all of them and then comparing them to your needs. Just saying DDL & DML isn't sufficient to...

Don't mistake my comments. XE is very well documented. Just not all the events. However, the events that most people are going to use, especially around auditing, are well documented.

I...

...which is why...

Paste the plan is probably better than this.

Well, if I'm looking at the right query plan, #10?, it looks radically different. 1 row out 4 estimated? The last one was...

But why a sort. There's no ORDER BY and the join is a Nested Loops, so order is not required. That's an odd choice in the plan.

I don't necessarily consider myself a complete [expert] in SQL Server, but that feeling isn't based on any inferiority complex, because I actually don't believe most self professed experts...

It seems to me that you could have all the certificates under the sun and be next to useless or none at all and be really good. The only...

Good question, Grant. I've seen some well known companies do very rigorous testing and interviewing of the candidates. I'd get the feeling that they really had a good idea...

Try the test again, but use a SEQUENCE. You should see the same results. It's because of the processing needed for maintaining an identity value versus the calculation of the...