See the following KB articles.

Hotifx 961 fixed our issues dating back 2+ years with a 3rd party app, large cursor, linked server. The first hotfix didn't do much.

We're running HF961...

@@SERVERNAME queries the table sysservers, hence why sp_addserver etc is required.

Correctly:

ServerProperty('ServerName') does not return the network name. It returns "machinename\sqlinstancename" or "machinename" if the default instance.

ServerProperty('MachineName') gives the actual server...

Encrypt the data at the column level.

See http://www.activecrypt.com for details on how to do column level encrption.

CXPacket errors can occur when parallel queries require time for each sub-thread to catch up.

For example Dual CPU with Hyper-Threading can generate a 4 way parallel query. Because hyper-threading is...

That's kinda reassuring, thanks.

At least it aint me...

What I forgot was the original server was SQL Standard, but the new server is Enterprise (temporarily, it's due to be decommissioned soon...

I agree with previous posters.

Use LiteSpeed or similar, if you haven't much data use the native SQL routines

Whatever you do, don't use an "agent" that hooks into SQL.

It backups a...

I agree that ordinarily multiple arrays will be better than single array, but surely it depends on database size, design etc. Server limitations also play a part.

Given an 8 disk...

I'm more with Frank on this.

I benchmarked different disk configs and found multi spindle RAID 10 the best (as in 6 or 8 disks upwards).

I'd go this way:

RAID 1 -...

OK Then

varchar it is, sod the local variations

'yyyymmddhhmmss' etc

ho hum.

If I have to specify dates, I try to use '04 Sep 2004' for constants etc.

I'm UK and I've found it easier to use this rather than yyyymmdd etc that...

In a word, no. It's an OS perf counter

This should be OK.

Upgrade your MDAC as well if you can.

From XP onwards, MDAC is part of the OS.

I've come across this before on some of our older Win2k SP2...

From the licensing FAQ:

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/howtobuy/faq.asp

Reporting Services is part of the SQL Server 2000 license. There is not a separate license for Reporting Services. If you have a licensed copy...

Given that RS is pretty much entirely data driven, as in the reports, the schedules and god knows what else are all in the DB, then it would make sense...

What are we meant to see?

The links don't work...