I'm going to "bail"on that one.  Pun definitely intended. 😀

If you stop calling it "Pre-Prod" and start calling it "UAT", there will be no question that it's not actually a production environment.  Of course, no part of it can...

I would suggest starting at the following bit of MS Documentation...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/system-dynamic-management-views/sys-dm-db-stats-properties-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15

I guess the OP has left the building. 😀

Deleting a question without a reason why is pretty rude.

Thanks for the feedback, Rick.

1. What unit of measure is...

I've never run across any "odd results" by using CHAR(1) in such a SELECT, yet.  With that in mind, do you have an example of what happened so 1) we...

Awesome question, Steve!

As a bit of a sidebar, it will also seriously speed up code for things like REPLACE, especially for servers that...

When you run such code, everything is pretty much "server-centric" when it comes to drive letters.  For example, you're referencing the "C:" drive in your code... when that executes on...

Thank you!  First I've heard of a Tally table.  I'm confused on one point in your discussion.  You say,

The largest number in the Tally table should not be just...

It's completely dependent on the indexes. I know Minion lets you pick lists of indexes & break up the process. I suppose Ola's script must too. Do that. Do...

Yes, I also thought about it, but the following example shows it doesn't matter - SQL Server implicitly converts NULL to the correct type, no?

DECLARE @t...

No... disabling the index doesn't substantially block the table except for the time it takes to disable...