In addition to what everyone has suggested (and the experience thing is the biggest and most important), I'd add the book: Database Administration by Craig S. Mullins. It's not specific...

Fantastic advice... Except for the GUID's. Indexing, especially clustered indexes, against GUID's is pretty problematic. They're bloody slow. I'd be very cautious in when, where, and how I introduced them...

Everything Peter said...

The caveat that you have to be aware of is memory. Every document handle takes a certain amount of memory. Then the document itself chews up memory. Memory...

We use Redgate SQL Compare.

You should know that there are several other tools out there in addition to the ones that others have already mentioned. Embarcadero has a pretty good...

Sounds like a really good script. I'll check it out when it becomes available.

One point, blocking locks and deadlocks are two different things. Deadlocks are caused by two processes...

Great answer. I should have thought to add all of that but didn't. Thanks for help.

As long as you know that you may have some number of transactions that cross over... No, it's not a big deal at all.

Set the the traceflags -T1204 and -T3605. This will write the basic deadlock info out to the SQL Server error log. Profiler will still be more useful in tracking down...

The biggest issue with going to Windows Authentication is the lack of support for this from third party applications. Almost every single one of them that I've installed since the...

Manual tests are probably run under your user context where as the automated schedules are running under the security context of the SQL Server instance. You need to verify that...

If it has to be part of the process, why not simply insert into both from the initial proc?

If you need to make it an async process, something along...

How do you mean "it won't let you copy the script?" I ask because, that's how I've migrated SQL Agent jobs in the past. Export them out to a script...

Create a compound index that is FromDate, ThruDate and then the null values on the ThruDate won't be a problem. Others will argue to set the ThruDate to the max...

I'd second this one. Even with a three minute timeout we get some pretty hefty loads running on the machine. And the fact of the matter is, no one should...

You can't change it on the fly once its running. What we do is set a stop point when we start it so that it will run for 24 hours...