Do you have any...

In general it isn't a good idea to put non-selective columns first as the optimizer might just decide to ignore them .... but if its say 99% vs 1% on...

Do any of the books mentioned above dig deep into the innards of Oracle, along the lines of the Inside SQL Server series? I will probably need to re-port...

When you use two part naming (prod.A in your example) SQL thinks that "prod" is a reference to a schema. Use three part naming : [databasename].[schemaname].[tablename]

For your purposes, it's...

You may want to look at forcing the query to recompile each time it executes (either through proc level or statement level recompile option).

Regarding the second item, the optimizer is smart enough to know what to look for so that it won't check unnecessary items. I believe that you may get a...

You should investigate DDL triggers - search on that and you will find that what you are trying to do is often given as an example of their usage. ...

I have a better understanding now. My DW knowledge is effectively none so I can't comment on how suitable the table structures are, but in terms of space I...

Is this on the marked-for-deprecation list for 2K8 (meaning it won't happen until 2K11) ?

You are correct in that SQL_VARIANT will store most datatypes, but you cannot take a SUM of the values without converting them. I put together a quick script:

CREATE TABLE...

Well you wouldn't be able to sum a variant column either. The CLR type would help in that it could internally figure out the type based on a ruleset,...

An interesting read ...

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/linchi_shea/archive/2007/01/29/how-many-data-files-should-i-create-for-a-user-database.aspx

In short, there potentially is a benefit to doing this even on a single disk ... but most databases aren't even close to meeting...

A CLR UDT might work here. In terms of reading back the information, ToString() could return the value in a consistent format which might make it easier to process....

I'm not sure on how much difference it would make, but SQL2005 fragmentation stats are more accurate than SQL2000, and by accurate I mean higher .... http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189858.aspx.

Unless I've...

I haven't made it to trying 2008 yet, but I would guess that there may be some kind of benefit from reduced locking (depending on the isolation level and the...