First question would be, why do you have this design? You could certainly create a script that was scheduled to run January 1st of every year to rename these tables,...

The two MAIN reasons I like identity columns is that you can put a clustered index on them and your inserts will always fall to the bottom level of the...

Are you sure you are not trying to install SQL Personal edition? When you buy standard edition they usually include a personal edition CD with it.

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

Here is a good link that may help you:

http://www.aspfaq.com/show.asp?id=2423

If you come up with specific questions, ask away!

Good Luck!

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

To make it easier you can do:

select serverproperty('productlevel')

To get service pack level and you can do

select serverproperty('edition')

To get the SQL Server edition.

HTH

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

We keep three days worth of both on the actual server and a month's worth on tapes. Also, when thinking of retention, think of failover as well, we copy backups...

I assume you mean columns 🙂

sp_help 'tablename'

If that is not what you need, please specify

HTH

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

Just read both of them, I am always amazed that there is always something new to learn about indexing. Excellent article, hesitant to trust that page splitting is so nominal...

All SQL Service packs, that I know of are cummulative. Instlling sp3a gives you all the fixes in all prior patches.

HTH

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

You can install SP3a by itself with no other sp's installed.

HTH

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

Hey, I just read on MS site that SP3a can be applied to personal edition 🙂 Save you some money...

From MS site: SP3a enables service pack upgrades for trial software....

Dev edition is $50, MS smartened up on this one 🙂

Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

That's quite a DB you have there Allen, I went to SAP teched in Vegas this year as we are going to implement BW. Do you plan on going to...

Just to add one more thing, people who know T-sql who don't know set based theory and the relational model can be hampered, if you were wanting to really learn...

For a complete newbie you might consider solutions architecture studying. Once you learn the methodology of designing systems, gathering requirements, data flow diagrams, it might help you in learning the...