Estimated IO cost is only partly based on page count. But, the fact that you're getting discrepancies is the beginning of what might be the issue. Have you looked at...

I've got a poster over at AskSSC that is utterly confusing me. He's either very unclear, or I'm very obtuse or some combination of the two. If anyone with an...

Instead of opening it up within the GUI, just run a query directly against it using sys.fn_xe_file_target_read_file

The best resources to learn about internals are the Books Online and the book SQL Server Internals by Kalen Delaney, et al. Benjamin Nevarez book is also a pretty good...

Refer back to the number of pages in the indexes. You can use sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (I think that's right, typing from memory) to see the size of the index or table.

Just remember that simply adding files won't always speed things up. It's adding files with additional disks under them that really makes a major difference. But, then you have to...

You should be able to get all the answers to your questions from the Quest web site. It's all there.

The blog can show the stuff you're learning too. It doesn't just have to be "look at me, I'm awesome." In fact the posts that say "Hey, I ran into...

Jeff Moden (2/22/2013)

I've been up to my eyes with work and they only have SQL Server 2005 so I haven't even broken the surface on Extended Events. That explains...

Instead of running XML queries against the server, a relatively high process event, I'd output the Extended Events to a file, then you can read that file from another server...

You can't detach a database with users actively connected to it. You'll have to kick them off first. No choice there.

While those tools do have the VS shell, you'll still have to do a Visual Studio install to get the ASP.NET aspects installed.

ScottPletcher (2/15/2013)

I haven't been required to do a point-in-time recovery or tail-log backup for MONTHS. Depending on the environment, that may never be required of your job as DBA.

Certainly...

Always, always, always, contact Microsoft directly for licensing questions. It's a constantly shifting target. Plus you can negotiate deals. There's just no way a random stranger, even ones as informed...

Also check the ANSI connection settings on the two servers.

Let's see, cost threshold for parallelism, the max degree of parallelism, umm... The stuff already mentioned.