Yes, it's possible.

See here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143241(v=sql.105).aspx

Catching up after a few days away...

@steve-2:

I would buy the X5. BMWs are great cars and even old ones (mine is 6 year old) look like new. The engine is...

GilaMonster (1/13/2015)

Correct.

Any login that's a member of the sysadmin fixed server role bypasses ALL security...

As far as I know, sysadmin grants all permissions regardless of what has been denied.

I even tried to deny CONTROL SERVER to a sysadmin login, but it had no effect,...

I'm 100% with Steve: don't grant permissions to users, go with roles instead.

There are also tools that can copy/script permissions, such as Idera Permissions Extractor (which is free)

It's a known issue. Maybe the windows machine was renamed and SQL Server didn't notice it happened.

serverproperty('servername') returns the correct server name, while @@servername may return the incorrect name.

Take a...

I rarely restart my SQL Servers. I wish I could restart them more often (apply patches and the like). In my case it wouldn't be an issue. How often are...

Maybe. Meanwhile, no response from them yet.

Are the spammers getting worse?

Fight fire with fire: let's spam their contact form!

You could create additional "virtual" columns using a CASE expression:

WITH BaseData AS (

SELECT

MyColumn =

...

You've got plenty, Jason: I wouldn't worry about that 😀

They're simply a measure of how chatty we are.

AFAIK, the first release compatible with windows 2012 is 11.2.0.4

Which version of Oracle?

Did you check the log file mentioned in the error?

Awesome! Glad I could help.

Some years ago I wrote an article on setting up a linked server with out-of-process OLEDB provider. It's not exactly what you're after, but it contains information on how to...