backup has never interrupted the log chain. Only the differential chain is impacted with a full backup. Copy only is for avoiding differential issues.

Yes, 16 is small, though how much data? If you have <16GB of data, maybe it's fine and you need to worry more about code and indexing.

There is a good explanation here. It's not 0 byte for nulls: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3793022/how-do-you-get-to-limits-of-8060-bytes-per-row-and-8000-per-varchar-nvarchar/3793265#3793265

The sparse column thing is for fixed width fields, like int, tinyint,etc

The SHA1 deprecation isn't applicable here.

There are two uses for hashing in CS.
1. Security - hide values, but provide a deterministic way of determining equality/inequality
2....

I am praying for this: https://www.mlb.com/news/how-nl-contenders-could-end-season-in-a-tie/c-295843618

I'm slightly confused. Are you looking for a rate per hour, or are you looking to find out the dispersion between two sales?

In your examples, these are two...

Maybe this helps, but I'm not 100% sure of what you're asking here.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-migrate-bcp?view=sql-server-2017

The client tools for Linux are available from a repo online. The...

Try here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/sql-server-technical-documentation?view=sql-server-2017

I have this bookmarked on all browsers.

As Jeff probably hinted before, tune some code. Add indexes, get some consulting help if you don't know how to do this.

Also, if management is worried, get faster...

To repeat the answers, same size space for fixed size fields, 0 for variable fields. There's a null bitmap

Are things working well? If so, ask for 32GB RAM, and similar CPU. Of course, better storage than you have now.

If things aren't working well, ask for 128GB...

There isn't a security risk here. I'd just pass this to the auditor and let them find a hole: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/encryption/extensible-key-management-ekm?view=sql-server-2017

Those tables for joins are so small they're always going to be in memory and the effort to add them in is trivial. Since you could grow beyond three states,...