We have various Chief Execs in prominent companies here who, when interviewed and asked why they got to where they were, they stated it was the quality of the mentoring...

Thanks for the article. 🙂

It is a sad fact that many people don't have clear career goals.

It is an even sadder fact that this is often the case because so...

Well there a various approaches ...

Perhaps the simplest is to perform a full backup of your existing SQL 2000 database, restore this onto your SQL 2008 instance.

Ensure that the database...

There is a certification discussion forum here, I'm sure there will be plenty of discussion there.

I know exams can be daunting (my first MS exam was). The MS study guides...

We all have mad moments 😀

.... just an idea (if I understand the problem correctly?)

Could you ...

- create a table with an uniqueidentifier key column and xml column

- create a new guid and...

Depending on your circumstances (i.e. whether your servers are hosting 3rd party systems or database supporting applications developed by your company etc.), it can be worth going through the list...

Regarding the 'Is SQL 2008 stable?' question ...

When SQL 2008 was released, I was quite struck by the McLaren whitepaper published on the Microsoft site, detailing how they'd been using...

If you are having difficulty convincing others of the need to upgrade, it might be worth adding that Microsoft are now withdrawing support for SQL 2005 SP2.

That is they are...

Would the it be possible to convert the .mdb Access into an Access .adp project (and point the .adp project at the shiny new SQL 2008 database)?

Its not an effort...

Hi,

I created this on my local desktop instance ...

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.Test

AS

RETURN

GO

I set STATISTICS TIME ON

Executed the procedure, and sure enough the first time it took 16ms to compile and generate...

... for each row

....... what is the index of the last character

........... of the largest substring

............... repeating no more than once

Is the above statement a basis for a solution to...

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. They are most helpful.

Basically its an ISV installing software, and we want to ensure (as far as possible) that they (end users) only get to see...

.... in the end what was the 'right' anwer, given the original question?

🙂 Was a bit surprised at FAST_FORWARD being wrong ... seemed such an 'obvious' answer that there was bound to be some additional complexity somewhere.

Also always with performance, it depends...