My understanding is that NOLOCK in a query overrides the global setting for that session.

The question isn't whether the inclusion of NOLOCK is wrong overall, but rather whether NOLOCK makes...

Been there, done that.

If you install SQL Server and then change the machine name, you will need to uninstall and reinstall SQL Server. There are some issues...

Virtualization of anything only helps when what you are virtualizing is UNDER utilizing, or expected to under utilize hardware resources.

If your 10K users/connections would normally tax a physical server then...

Are you looking in multiple tables for "abc"?

Or are you looking at multiple rows in the ONE table where the column has a value of "abc"?

Posting scripts to recreate the...

The question we all are raising is whether this is RC2 or R2.

If this is R2 and you mistyped then no problem.

If you are really installing RC2 (Release Candidate 2)...

Another thought is that you could use third-party apps to monitor the servers. There are some very good ones out there from Red Gate, SQLSentry, and several others.

Unfortunately, this was introduced in R2 and only works with R2 (version 10.50) or greater (future versions).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210548.aspx

This is a great new feature and an add-on or something for other versions...

Check out this link for creating a linked server:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190479.aspx.

There is an example specific to Oracle. You will need to make sure the appropriate provider from Microsoft, and possibly Oracle...

For starters, you could an index that uses the two columns in the WHERE clause. That will probably be a huge improvement.

That is all you need!

There are some decent tutorials on that site. Pay particular attention to the ones that show how to create your datasources and the ones on...

That is correct. All UDF types are database specific and cannot cross database boundaries. This is great for security and all, but very frustrating if you would like...

I believe you can use the Taks | Generate Script option when you right-click the database.

Be sure and click Advanced on the second screen. Then change the Types of...

If you are going to access existing data tables then go to http://www.powerpivot.com. You find a free BI add-in for Excel 2010.

It works best on the 64-bit version due...

Questions for you on this:

Are these all read-only?

If so, why would each need a separate schema?

You have separate schemas, or separate databases for each county?

I would suggest downloading the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio Express from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56AD557C-03E6-4369-9C1D-E81B33D8026B&displaylang=en.

This is basically the Client tools in a separate package. The only catch is that BIDS...