First, make a copy of the existing master data file(s) and log file (in Windows, not a SQL BACKUP). You may be able to read some data out of...

I've read the whole thread. Very interesting discussion.

But I don't understand the claim that "Optimistic Locking" has no overhead.

What about all those rollback/undo errors in Oracle? Oh those...

Excellent point!

Interesting. TRUNCATE doesn't fire triggers, so I wouldn't think a trigger would be causing the partial DELETEs.

Is this the actual table that is being TRUNCATEd, or somehow is it...

Why do you keep referring back to the "ancient" SQL 2000 views?

MS itself tells you they're not reliable for SQL 2005 and SQL 2008.

Exactly: the orphaned ones will not show up in the GUI, so you can't delete them there, but you can DROP them using the T-SQL commands.

Please include the exact sp_dropuser command you used and the results of SELECT * FROM sys.database_principals as well.

The user account can't be used to access data.

But you should be able to drop the user account from the db.

What error message do you get when you try to...

Hmm, that's a difficult issue. With what you're doing that won't be easy.

I thought earlier about creating a full-text index across the "notes" column. In theory that could...

You can't drop the user account(s)? [not the actual login]

You can refer to previously defined CTEs in a later CTE, but you must reference it like a table, i.e. JOIN to it, since that is effectively what it is.

Did the TRUNCATE TABLE actually work? There are, of course, certain restrictions to using TRUNCATE.

Did something else in the batch fail and cause a rollback? Unlike Oracle, a...

Yep, you need to verify that the log will actually shrink as much as want before issuing the SHRINK command. That means putting the db in simple mode first.

You...

Get the free SQLIO tool and gather stats from that too. That will give you a best-case baseline for disk io (and, if the numbers aren't good/right, allow you...

You should be able to use DROP USER or sp_dropuser to get rid of users in the db, whether they are linked to a login or not.