Nothing good out there. I emailed MS and got this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/authentication-access/principals-database-engine

Perhaps that's the best one as it notes you should not delete them. I asked...

We can't confirm anything. We don't have your server.

If you read the link, Case 2 from Paul is likely what you need to do, if you cannot follow...

If you need PoSh, Inboke-SQLCmd makes many things easier. Just drop your code in there.

Skin. Of. My. Teeth.

LOL, nice, Jeff. I was hoping to avoid some variable in there, but that looks nice.

How would you do this manually? If I said today, compress the partition from yesterday, what would you do? Likely you can get the code right and then look at...

Potentially. If you can't take a tail log backup, any changes not in data files will be lost.

For mirroring, the rules are to really patch the mirror first. Stop the services on the mirror (secondary) side, apply the patches. Bring back up and sync. Then start applying...

Are there other values in the set? You don't really have anything that creates a group, other than the sum, and for that, you have a variable set of values.

K, rolled into a proc since it's easier to test. Put your data into a table called RTSource. This lets me add other data and play.

Proc:

Traffic isn't encrypted by default. If you used Always Encrypted, it would be, but I wouldn't do that. TDE doesn't encrypt traffic either.

You could use SSL, but really,...

It's a restriction because the keys are in different databases. I believe as a security precaution, you can't reference those keys from another db. I hadn't thought about this before,...