Guys,

Thank you for all your thoughts and input. It looks as if in the long term we'll be better off using the relational model. This is what I'd hoped for...

Thanks Matt

Been away so only just seen your update. The Celko book is obviously one for my Christmas list!

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Try Embarcadero's ER Studio - brilliant tool

Matt,

Thanks for your help. I'd sort of thought that the self-referencing table was going to be the basis for my solution but given that we have an unspecified number of...

We got so fed up with SQL Mail/Outlook problems, especially on clusters, that we now always install SMTP service on all database servers and use CDONTS rather than Outlook.

Funnily enough...

Excellent Celko article (as always).

Does anyone have a link for the Metadata Standards Committee naming conventions he discusses in that articl?

Cheers,

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We've recently started prefixing column names with a two or three letter prefix to identify table. This makes writing joins much easier and helps instantly identify columns...

I too, have no developer history. In fact, up until January 2000 I was in the hairdressing industry - initially on the salon floor and latterly working...

I've also got a script which will either print space used etc. to results window or dump it to a table. Quite useful for monitoring incremental database growth. Let me...

Nice easy one this...

Run sp_spaceused from the database in question. The "Reserved Space" plus 1-2% will give you a pretty good approximation of full backup size.

Hope this helps,

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For 228 SQL 2K Admin I've used Perkovich's All-In-One, Brian Knight's Admin 911 SQL Server 2000, Delaney's Inside SQL Server 2000 and of course BOL.

I've been in IT just under...

I guess I'm not talking from any great depth of experience here but I'll add my two-penneth anyway.

Up until two years ago I was in the hairdressing insdustry before...

Another, really simple but effective way is return the variable as a record set. If your ASP's not too hot this is a doddle.

CREATE PROCEDURE SP_SMTPSTATS AS

DECLARE @test-2...