Heh... I also find it interesting that most people didn't bark out an "It Depends".  Right-sizing is certainly important but so are other considerations such as implicit casts during joins,...

Heh... there's nothing more challenging than real life.  If you want some problems to work on for training, look at the code you have.  Develop a "Continuous Improvement Project" where...

I think the biggest benefit is that you can move a "copy only" file anywhere you want it, lose it, or delete it, and it won't affect the possible restores...

I'm curious, Steve.  With the understanding that the largest positive value you can calculate for BIGINT only occupies 63 bits (and you are only taking positive values into consideration in...

You're paying through the nose for the Enterprise Edition, you have 750 databases, and you're trying to do it all on 1/2 of 98GB?  My recommendation would be to first...