In our backup stratergy, we backup to disk, and allow the tape backup utility to backup the disk backups. I wouldn't recommend ever getting SQL Server to backup directly to tape,...

Using SQL-DMO objects, you can access the ListBoundColumns method on the UserDefinedDatatype Object.

Read BOL and check out the Samples directory for details about using DMO. The object heirarchy is displayed...

Are they really old logs? Maybe SQL Server doesnt even know they exist. The Maintenance Plans dont look at the disk to see what files are there, they use the...

If you want to make life really diffiicult and you had a lot of lengthy data to check, you could use Full Text Searching, which can return a RANK for...

mmm putting passwords in stored procedures is such a bad idea.

What's wrong with doing a little error handling?

IF EXISTS(SELECT top 1 * FROM [mylinkedserver].[master].[dbo].[sysdatabases])

BEGIN

  -- mylinkedserver is up and...

You have a table WITHOUT an Identity column ? Is there a Primary key at all ?

Query Analyzer with a WHERE clause would be the way to go. If your...

In SQL EM , right click SQL Agent and Display Error Log. You might find more information there. Or check SQL Server's logs. Or Check the Windows Event Viewer.

One of...

Make sure you test restoring. You'll know then if your plans are worth while.

fhanlon is right. TempDB shouldn't be backed up. Nothing that's in there needs to be kept, and...

maybe off track but: Is your app closing the connections gracefully?

If you are using ADO.Net you need to make sure you .Close() the connection before destroying the object, otherwise it...

Want everything to be consistant? Allways preface your objects with their owner, both on create and select/exec.

CREATE PROC dbo.MyStoredProc

CREATE TABLE dbo.MyTable

EXEC dbo.MyStoredProc

SELECT * FROM dbo.MyTable

Check to make sure that your...

You can do it without COALESCE if you use an ISNULL function instead:

declare @names varchar(500)

select @names = IsNull(@names,'') + ',' + IsNull(fname,'') from Users

select @names

But as adrian_rf pointed out. If...

In 7 / 2000 you'll need a temporary table and a loop to get the full heirarchy. Infinite loops are great this way too.

I believe 2005 can create a view...

Hmm. If you cancelled a process, SQL Server would have started rolling back the changes. If you shutdown SQL Server during this process, then when it boots it's going to...

A rowcount can be done in two ways:

Most accurate and slowest: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM MyTABLE

Less accurate but instant: SELECT ROWCNT FROM Sysindexes WHERE ID = ObjectID('MyTable') AND Name = 'MyTable'

That rowcount is...

Do they need to be listed in Active Directory?

If they are local developer instances, its probably not neccessary to pollute the AD with them.

I'm not too familiar with AD/SQL...