I can answer a few, but I'm not sure what some are:

1. I've used this (http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/codingstandardspart1.asp), but there is a standard for metadata: ISO-11179

2. If you mean auditing, there are...

Some SAN vendors have classes on their products. Andy went to on at Dell when he bought their product.

A few:

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=1892

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql2k/html/sql_asphosting.asp

There is a setupsql.log or something in Windows or sys32. Find the most recently modified files and it will stand out. That might help. Otherwise a $249 call to ...

Already started: http://server.glypho.com:2401/

Have never seen an alternative and Andy and I have been talking to Red Gate for 3 years to release this.

As far as sysdepends issues. If someone drops/recreates an object,...

It is different in that you are creating an object in the schema of dbo rather than the user. Subtle, but a difference.

The category applies to that version, not necessarily...

You'd have to work through the object model for your pacakage in the DTS ActiveX to move the mappings. It's possible, heck you could build the entire package at runtime.

One...

I'm really out of my area, but 127.0.0.1 is assigned by default to the network interface and allows local addressing. (local) is a SQL Server only connection item from their...

David has great advice listed above.

I'd add in there backup/restore on SQL Server.

SQL Agent, scheduling jobs, basic DTS packages for Excel import/export, sending SQL Mail.

Haven't seen any. SP4 had some AWE issues if you use that, so there was a patch for those.

This is a great place for SQLCLR in SQL Server 2005.

Also, are you trying to merge as in UNION with both sets of rows or merge as in adding more columns to your result set?

In addition to Kenneth's ?s.

There are ways with DBCC to read the log, but it's not easy to do, or easy to interpert. The third party products are worth the $$ easily and it's...