I have removed "great" from the question as it does depend. There is some performance impact, but how much is debatable.

You can view the code in master and just copy it. It's a simple cursor.

I tend to use names in this case, avoiding specific system names.

Me for sure. THe officials are just making mistakes.

I agree that it's hard to charge for a DBA as a support person in many cases. There are companies that just don't want to pay for this from a...

I was thinking

Server A - SQL 2000 (licensed)

Server B - SQL 2008 (unlicensed) - log ship secondary

Server C - SQL 2008 - new server for reporting

However, as George mentioned, the...

vo-confused-erous

My pleasure. It's a trick an admin showed me for scripting something from the command line. Add in a column for server and you have a great SQLCMD script generator.

I think most of the general SQL books are about the same. I might start with one of those, then move on to specific areas you are working on.

Database Weekly...

Here's how I did it with Excel. You could drop this code in a one cell, easily fill your db names in another, and create a quick script with

use dbname

go

create...

More here: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/search/?q=remove+old+backup+files&t=s

Typically a DR machine, which an in between instance might qualify for, is not charged as a license. Check with MS on your situation.

You can log ship as STANDBY (allow...

There are some applications, like Access, that can lock and hold an entire table. I would follow Gail's suggestion and check for blocking.

I concur with the question about Windows Scheduler above. The notification, error handling, etc. is much more robust in SQL Server Agent.

There are a couple things I can think of.

Log shipping will work, but you need an automated method of ensuring the restores are only done at night. Not sure if...

A similar post today from the SQL Rockstar (http://thomaslarock.com/2010/06/community-communication/)