If you would post the code you're using, perhaps we could solve all of your problems with a bit of a magic temporal formula that doesn't rely on any settings...

I think you may have a larger issue on your hands... It's a really bad idea to store temporal data as strings.

You'll probably need to look at Task Manager or Resource Monitor to figure out exactly what software is being executed there.  Do you have an infrastructure team that might know?

Thanks. I learned this at Redgate, where we had like 5 web frameworks at one point and realized that it took weeks...

I think it is a typo, they probably meant to type '-- = inv.tblSoftware'

Which would mean that inv.tblSoftware is just a comment for clarity, describing something about the insert...

First, I hope that you're taking a final full backup followed by a "Tail Log" backup to properly shut down a database prior to drop it.

As for determining if the...

I don't understand what you need to do. I presume that you don't want to union all query 1 with query 2. Do you need to left outer join...

We have a third part software and looking at some of their SQL we found this

INSERT INTO tblSoftware ( Inventory , Software, [Name] , Manufacturer , [Language] , [...

To be clear, do you mean the forum is on this SQLServerCentral site?  If so, could you provide a...

Ditto that.  In memory...

Last night I spent 45 minutes composing a complicated question here. When I finished I started the review, and then Chrome, crashed. Thanks, Chrome. This isn't the only time...

...

I've sat in management meetings where people have expressed frustration that people don't auto-magically know stuff and that surely something is common sense.  The people outside of the...

I've into the questions posed here many times.  That's why I'm so careful at interviewing my future employers. 😀 😀 😀

To Steve's point, you should eventually get well-practiced enough to...

1. How many Megabytes does your current 50 million row table have for the Clustered Index?
2. How many rows per batch will typically be inserted into the table?

Is your friend using THROW along with a check on the number of transactions to force a ROLLBACK.  Also, is your friend using SET XACT_ABORT ON as a setup step...