well, I thought that ALTER DATABASE SET ONLINE would work but it doesn't in 2005. Perhaps my memory is failing.

RESTORE DATABASE xxx WITH RECOVERY will bring it online.

(Donald Farmer accent): Newbie, I've given you all I've got. We can't push it any harder. That query on the dilithium table will came apart if you keep running it.

As Gail mentioned, you want to get the results of this to see what's wrong. 20 hours does seem like a long time. How large is the DB?

My guess is...

Wow, two complements in a row.

Nice job, VM

Do all your restores using the NORECOVERY option, and then you can use an ALTER DATABASE to bring the database online. The reason is that if you don't use this,...

I agree, nice re-write, Paul.

You need the log space. The only thing that will let you use less peak log space is more frequent log backups.

Fair enough, Paul White. I'm not sure what I could do here now other than watch for more info and revise things when it's available.

If it's not clear to you,...

sys.sql_logins

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174355(SQL.90).aspx

There must be something else, like what Gail has listed.

I think some products use .dat as an extension. Someone may just use that as a default, which is a bad idea.

I pinged the ZDNet writer. He is looking into it and will likely post an update.

and this works?

There must be something in that connection / session that creates #con.

AFAIK, an explicit create or select..into is needed.

OK, heard from Andy. Didn't get any props. He thought he'd get a few things, but his budget was blown in 17 seconds, so he stopped bidding.

No assumptions, bitbucket, on the success or failure of a project. This is at a lower level of where developers make mistake in the coding, not in interpreting the requirements...