Brad McGehee posted a very informative set of slides on the transaction log, which were mentioned on this site yesterday and are accessible here http://bradmcgehee.com/wp-content/uploads/presentations/St%20Louis_Inside%20the%20SQL%20Server%20Transaction%20Log.pdf.

Checking my assumptions at the door:

How...

Without wishing to start some kind of "Oh yes it is" "Oh no it isn't" discussion, partitioning can be used to improve performance on large data sets. That's the point...

Depending on the specifics of the implementation, you may find that the easiest way to improve performance is to get off RAID5.

Partitioning would allow you to split your table across...

T-SQL is pretty slow at parsing / shredding XML, so you will probably find that it is better to use an exe for that. You could even make it part...

You may want to consider using a DATENAME() instead of the cumbersome CASE statement. That would also allow some language variation dependant on the default language.

I don't believe you can just issue a "move" command to relocate the table.

However you can create a table in the new database and do a direct copy.

From one of the videos on Azure I've been watching there does seem to be a way to re-create a database in Azure at a point in time. I can't...

While I think about it, if I choose the environment in which I develop, I don't think the company can necessarily force me to use their dev tools or languages....

In theory, I suppose devices are fine, but licenses can be a problem. Visual Studio? MSDN? SQL Toolbelt? 😉

What about software developed using these resources? The usual stipulation is that...

The fact that it places a schema lock on the tempdb for the duration of the query is my issue. If the query is fast enough, this may not be...

I was surprised and disappointed to see that the inability to use SELECT... INTO was a disadvantage.

Anything which takes that option away from developers is a good thing IMHO!

I have...

The problem is the RETURN immediately after the RAISERROR.

The 1st answer from @sturner of increasing the severity should work as this will force execution of the CATCH.

As an...

I found Erland Sommarskogs series of articles on dynamic SQL to be both informantive and helpful on this topic.

http://www.sommarskog.se/

He has some great worked examples alongside the pro's and con's of...

Because I enjoy a challenge, here's some suggested code that may help! This will return 1 line for each Comments record with the sum of the hits counter between dates.

CREATE...

I suspect that one of your records in the User_Master table has the created_by set to the same value as the user_id.

This sample works fine for me, but uncommenting the...