I don't think it would get rid of the full-text problem as that service runs as a local admin and the passwords need to be kepted in synch.

When you change the service account (or service password) via EM it also ensures that the account has rights to certain registry keys, directories, rights and synchronizes the MS Search...

You can script the database changes in dev, then release then to test, and run the same scripts on production. That way TEST and PRODUCTION will be inline.

Also

You will need to change the collation

e.g.

declare @test-2 table (teststr varchar(100) collate Latin1_General_BIN)

insert into @test-2 values ('ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!@#$abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz%^&*()+=|.{[}]<>?/:"-~'';')

select CHARINDEX('k',teststr) from @test-2

select CHARINDEX('K',teststr) from...

This is espically true now people are running sql server without admin rights (finally).

If the registry keys are not changed you have problems.

You could encrypt the field, which would mean changing the code that needs to read/write to that field.

For example see http://www.activecrypt.com

who sell encryption addins

The only other (painfull) suggestion would be to manage all the code that uses the linked server eg tie it down into stored procedures etc, and ensure it only does...

In vba can you assign a variable to be an output parameter similar to vb?

If so you could pass the value back in an output parameter.

You can use 'dynamic property task' to override values eg out files, sql code etc.

A shot in the dark,

Is the server you are restoring the backup on a same or later edition of sql server?

e.g. your not trying to restore a sql 2000 backup...

What edition of sql are you using? I think Personal Edition closes the databases when the last connection to the database ends.

Have you got the database option 'autoclose' checked? If...

If you use the Exec command with a parameter, you may wish to validate the input for sql injection

e.g.

exec p 'master..syslogins ; drop procedure p--'

Try the UK Sql Server User Group which can be found at http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/

Couldn't you restrict the access on the Progress account that the linked server uses?

I seem to remember reading something about this at http://www.sqldts.com