And I'm beginning to think this thread will never end.

We are working on some JS and server side formatting for both SQL and XML code to make it work better.

A lot of what Gus has listed are reasons I'm concerned about this.

I think things work well as is. Relatively few people would likely use any "improvements"

glad I could help. I need to get a better article written on this as I know it's an annoying thing to figure out.

DTS has a runtime. It should work and there's still a compatibility mode. If it works on 2005, should still work on 2008.

As far as rewriting DTS packages. If you...

Thanks for the update and solution. That shouldn't happen often, but it's good to consider removing and recreating the job.

No, shrink should be rarely run. Only when something happens you didn't expect.

select * from sys.database_files

in master should help.

You can go to sysinternals as well and get the filetracker and see if the file is being held open by the SQL process.

I'm not sure you get a lot from 2 partitions. I suppose one could become corrupt and not the other, which would be nice to have data on one, logs/backups...

does is change on stop/restart of SQL?

strange, I'd be concerned that you are using the wrong files. Have you tried to rename a file? See if SQL is using it?

Thanks for the responses and I wish I'd had a few of these on Tue in the MVP sessions. There were questions about what compelling things would get people to...

Lynn,

I agree and noted as much in my email. I did ask him/her to have a friend or two read through it and give an opinion.

I'd say BCP. use a format file.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa174646(SQL.80).aspx

Apologies for not getting in there sooner. I could see the heat coming through the wires from people's ears.

Supposedly this is an "MVP" as well. I suggested he post the...

We have a fix (I think) in test now. We're hoping to roll that out before too much longer.