Very strange.

Make sure there is no trigger on the table that might affect UPDATEs.

Make sure ID 23654 only matches one row in the table (so that you're not just seeing...

Nope, as people have stated about that. In this area, it's your mind that's wrong. NULL ("UNKNOWN") is obviously not FALSE...

That is my understanding as well. But I'd still suggest talking to someone who specializes in licensing because it's quite complex now.

XML will definitely be slow.

It sounds like you're going from SQL Server to SQL Server. If that's the case, native format would be fastest.

If you're allowed to, take your own differential backup (or have one taken), then use that to bring the restored db current.  Much easier than restoring a long list of...

Instead of an INNER JOIN, do a FULL OUTER JOIN.

Overall, this process takes some time to get used to.  Don't expect to master it all at once.

The really critical part is to draw the business folks into the process...

Yes.  Not all of them need all the detail, but every attribute or column (I guess "field" is ok...

(6) A view is a customized set of columns or computed values from existing tables.  The view may leave out some columns and may create new columns.  What goes in...

(5) (A) Customers with less than "Excellent" credit rating must get approval for any order over $500 (or whatever amount) before it is processed, or pay for the order in...

(2) "How could the way they use the database affect the data requirements?"  It doesn't really, so your skepticism is correct.  Hopefully the author just worded this somewhat awkwardly.  What...

Take a look at the execution plan. It's going to be all one allocation.

UNION ALL isn't a bad performer in general. In fact, usually, you get better performance...

Are you saying that this query didn't work?:

SELECT *

FROM (

SELECT TOP (1) vacationhours AS 'Max_VacationHours', *

FROM [HumanResources].[Employee]

ORDER BY vacationhours DESC

) AS q1

UNION ALL

SELECT *

FROM (

SELECT TOP (1) vacationhours AS 'Min_VacationHours',...

This query:

Select TOP (1) 'Max Vacation Hours' as 'Vacation Hours', *

From [HumanResources].[Employee]

UNION ALL

could give you any row in the table since it doesn't have an ORDER BY.

I don't think there any built-in functions that would directly help with that.

As Phil suggested, post examples and he can help you with custom code to do it.