Nice 2005 solution. It's one I wouldn't have come up with, though I think any solution would work as long as it found the duplicates. After all, it's mainly a...

First, moved this to the DTS area.

Second, do the resources on the server get beatan up? Memory low, disk/CPU high? I might try moving this to a workstation or another...

You can "guess" by looking at syslogins and check the updatedate. This can change for any number of things, but this would apply for a password change. This gives your...

I'm not a licensing expert, but what I have always learned and applied is what Eddie wrote. These are just licensing / administrative documents, not applied to the software.

FYI, if...

You set the identity when you create the table. There's no need to turn it on. The inserts will activate it.

I'd think $7-8 might be relative to where you are. In a smaller environment, this could be a lot. I've had plenty of servers cost 5 figures or even 6,...

First I'd think about 64-bit, and especially think about upgrading to 2005 or 2008. I'd recommend looking at 2008 for next year. Which means learning SSIS a bit now.

There have...

If you need to move them, I think you have to rebuild on the new filegroup, dropping the old.

If you are working with multiple filegroups, I'd be sure you always...

Good call on the CHECKPOINT. Didn't think of that.

Please let us know if you find anything.

Import into a staging table, use an Identity to capture the order, delete the items with ID < 5.

Reseed the table each time you do this. (DBCC CHECKIDENT)

I'd do what Roy has mentioned to minimize downtime.

also, be sure that you have looked for SQLAgent jobs or DTS packages that people might be expecting to exist on...

You cannot make a dynamic view.

You can make the same view in every db and then call it with the 3 part naming (db.owner.view).

So I can create MyView in every...

It matters after a point. I'd say if you've never managed anything larger than 50GB, and you're asked to run a 500GB database, you might not be prepared.

At some point...

Are you sure you have exact copies? Data distribution matters as well. Perhaps increase the statistics sampling size?

I'm with Grant. Something has to be different.

Depends on production DBA, development DBA, etc.

Lots of debate on this:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/dbaroles/517/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/thevalueofadba/1806/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/State+of+the+Business/deathoftheproductiondba/432/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Certifications/3176/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2989/