Am I the only one who noticed that the post says 640 db server, while upon reading the article it states:

MySpace's extensive IT architecture currently features 2,682 Web servers, 90...

I just had to perform a quick test.  Although I don't have the time to do the test on a VLDB which does run on a multi-proc beefy machine.  I...

I am very curious about your  statement as to never use the select into... I will have to do some testing to verify as I have experienced otherwise, and have...

You could have a scheduled job that stores the results for sysobjects and syscolumns and compares them daily.  I've done this as a workaround before.