I'd run this with recompile as well and see if it's sniffing something.

The execution plan, as Jack mentioned, is where I'd start looking for answers.

I'd agree with Andy and Simon_L, help or ignore them, don't bash them.

And Andy has stars under his name!?!?!?! Might need to do something about that;)

But not necessarily a bad excuse. I'd agree with Jeff you want to avoid cursors and almost always can. However they are a tool that can work in places.

Still tracking for < Dec 31.

It's hard to get you something to do because there isn't enough information here. The low cahce hit ratio makes me wonder if your data is significantly diverse that you...

We like to think we have a good signal/noise ratio here and most people are professional, but I definitely need to clean things up on a regular basis.

I try to...

There are wizards in SSMS for importing and exporting data. They create basic SSIS packages, which might help you.

The PK is the unique identifier for a row. Your data will tell you this one. It can be clustered or non-clustered, depending on how you query, though I lean...

Would I quit my job over backups? Probably not, but I'd want someone to put it in writing that I was absolved of issues because of this. And I might...

I don't think any of the data in the backup file is visible natively. SQLCompare (Red Gate) can do this, comparing with a backup file and can likely pull the...

Please watch the forums in which you post. Moved to SSRS.

No idea why this doesn't run. Are the SSRS and SSIS on the same server?

You'd still have to join in data somehow. Your joins don't necessarily have to relate to each other, meaning that you just have to qualify which rows you want from...

THanks for the note. I'll get someone to check it out.

Peter, interesting comments.

I think some of the issues aren't just that it's government, but that it's often there's not enough transparency and accountability. Not enough of the desire to really...

Interesting comments. It's funny to see how many people look at different things.

And I think it's fine to not have any absolutes. I try to have few, mostly guidelines though...