That's for sure. I love "experts" who don't know how to tell what the current SQL activity on the box is.

Interesting. I guess my concern is that if a (very) large table(s) need updated, you could see a significant hit to your performance from autoupdate of stats. Also,...

First, 100% on the honesty thing. I would detect you and not hire you. Moreover, I would add you to my personal file of "never hires". Just...

Hmm, but happens if/when your requirements change and a table that was a "prime" table becomes an intersection table, or vice versa? Do you go back thru and rename...

Regarding table names, I now prefer singular but can live with plurals ... the main thing is consistency. Whichever you choose, use it thru-out, without regard to whether it's...

I've read everything: interesting article and comments!

FWIW, here's my take on a first-cut design *for just books* [personally I would adjust it to allow reviews on other objects -- such...

I need to find the record in the DB that has a start time >= the time of my call and on or after the day of the week...

I think you need to check the current date instead of automatically using s.enddate in the calcs. For example:

DATEDIFF(DAY, s.startdate, CASE WHEN GETDATE() < s.enddate THEN GETDATE() ELSE s.enddate...

The INSERT will not, and should not, be reflected in the table until the statement has finished....

If it's not running from SQL, how does it even have a spid?  I thought spid was used by SQL, kpid was used by Windows.

>> I'm pretty sure that when OSQL is used, any procs called by it are given the same spid. <<

Yes, of course. 

But the osql task itself will have a...

The index should be on the search column(s), not on an id column.

Yes, if you want to add an index to a small table, and you should for many of them, always make it a unique, clustered index.  For example, for the sample...

I thought the osql was a separate process and so would get its own spid.  How will you know which row in the table the child process needs to get?

Probably easiest is to do something like this (handles up to 24000, assuming PRINT can handle that):

print space(@hangingIndent) + replicate(@startCharacter, CASE WHEN @widthOfPattern > 8000 THEN 8000 ELSE @widthOfPattern END)...