GUID or int, use some type of surrogate key.

Expect that data will not be clean, and I'd build routines to make it easy to let people "link up" or correct...

I'll see if I can get the boy to do the Halo dance 🙂

Not sure where it comes from. This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one's_own_dog_food) could be the origin.

At Peoplesoft they wanted to call...

If you click your name in a thread (left side), you'll get to your profile, which has it. I know, it's dumb.

We're working on exposing this elsewhere and hope to...

I'll investigate changing the default.

You might have duplicate keys 🙂

Other than that, nothing I'm aware of.

I think Ed has some great advice and it's what I'd recommend.

It could be because of the compatibility level, but I'd think it would be a bug.

IS there a duplicate index in sysindexes?

Sounds like your log file might have problems. Have you checkdisk'd the drive? Maybe move the log file off and back to make sure there are not bad blocks.

It could...

Lowell had an interesting thought in another thread. Use Windows security to prevent him/her from running the EM executable. That might work.

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it works a file at a time, in other words, it has it's own queue of writes to move, so the pausing would...

Try looking at fn_my_permissions or query sys.database_permissions or sys.server_permissions.

Are you sure the job is done? Just because it's done on other mornings doesn't mean it's not a problem on that day.

Also, you aren't defragging the distribution database, you're...

You would need the format of the Appointment email and then build that in SQL Server. I don't know of a solution off hand for this.

Is it using Exchange?...

It's not any long running jobs, it's more that if a lot of data changes occur, the logs grow. If someone updated every row to some wrong value and then...

I work for Red Gate and I have heard great things about their tools.

However I think any of the tools will work and you can burn the $300 or so...