Nice introduction to DBPro. Well written.

But, I have to agree with Mr. Leach on the basic point that instead of comparing databases as a deployment methodology, we in the database...

One for the car would be really cool.

Whoa! Wait a second here. Superman is imaginary?

I'm not too sure I'm crazy about this trend. I mean, some of us have a face perfect for radio...

I do have to admit to using Redgate SQL Refactor & SQL Prompt. Between the two they do tons of formatting so I don't have to. I do like the...

I still capitalize the reserved words because not all our SQL code will end up in a nice graphical editor. It does make it a bit easier to read.

If the environment has moved to 2005 and its new development, there's no real reason to not go to SSIS. It's going to be the tool used in future releases...

Have you looked for configuration differences  between the BETA servera and PROD?

Any chance that after inserting 1.2 million rows a record at a time that you've got index fragmentation problems?

Those...

<ShamelessPlug>I just got an article published on the basics of performance tuning at Simple-Talk.com

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/sql-server-performance-crib-sheet/

</ShamelessPlug>

It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but have you looked into, what was in SQL 2000, the black box? Lookup sp_trace_create in BOL.

Something along the lines of:

SELECT c.State, h.HotelName, h.MinPrice

FROM City c

INNER JOIN Hotel h

ON c.City = h.City

AND h.Range = (SELECT MIN(Range)

                               FROM Hotel h2

                               WHERE h2.City = h.City

                               and h2.Hotel = h.Hotel

                        ...

The estimated plan can't be trusted because statistics & data can get out of sync. I had to come up with a contrived situation to display it. Silly, I'll grant...

With some help from a person, here's one that works (by works I mean we get two different plans).

IF

EXISTS (...

The short answer is "as often as possible." What this translates to varies widely based on system, space, etc.. The reason is pretty much as you state. You need to...

It's funny you say that. The reason I posted an XML plan was that the graphical plans were acting all wonky with that script. There's a mystery I'm going to...