D'OH, sorry, change the TINYINTs to SMALLINTs.

I assume you know the column type is char/varchar/nchar/nvarchar.  If not, remove the check for "%char%"; if you know it's varchar, naturally you can change it to "%varchar%".

For one db:

SELECT...

> Kill connections is pretty good. <

No, it's not - ALTER DATABASE should be used.

And if you really want  to issue specific KILLs, you can do it something...

Sorry, correct, I mis-read the original q.

Try looking at table "syscolumns".  It includes not just table columns but also stored procedure columns .

For example:

SELECT *

FROM syscolumns WITH (NOLOCK)

WHERE id...

Change @Qry from VARCHAR(5000) to VARCHAR(8000).

I too don't like a "t"|"tb[l]" prefix, no least of all because a view can be changed to a table and vice-versa.  Column prefixes, of any type, are even worse.

I do...

No, "wrong situation" refers primarily to an application being added to the server.  And not necessarily a full-blown business app either. 

Say, instead, Java applets are added to the server. ...

>> How much memory does SQL use on startup? <<

I disagree about the relevance of this q.  This knowledge is not only useful but vital for a senior DBA.  Otherwise,...

Split the varchar and int portions for storage purposes only.  You can still combine them for display, etc..

So, create two new columns, one varchar and one (small)int, copy the existing...

I recommend (Philip) Pratt's "A Guide to SQL".  I used it for db classes I taught and thought it was excellent for students.

All those LEFT JOINs will kill your performance.

But, would you really ever need to process the Item master table?  Wouldn't you be more likely to be processing the Applications, etc.,...

I would think that the first time the proc is run, and any future time that it has been paged out of the cache, there will be more overhead for...

Very sweet!

But why the extra overhead of declaring and setting a variable?  Why not just return the calc'd value?

...

BEGIN

RETURN CASE WHEN ...

END

Make sure the table is not fragmented.  You will have to add an index to check and/or adjust fragmentation.  Once the table is compacted, if necessary, you can drop the...