Be careful of assigning db_ddladmin for the purposes you've described. It will give the users permission to manipulate object definitions (tables/views/SPs), but not the execute permissions you require.

Unfortunately SQL...

If the SELECT statements aren't fussy about uncommitted data you could give them a NOLOCK hint, and they won't interfere with the INSERTs.

If you're resigned to deadlocks and don't want...

It may be a clustered index corruption. Have a look at MS Knowledge Base Article - 317852

Is there an option of leaving the 5m rows in Oracle and accessing it from SQL Server as a linked server?

It could be an MDAC issue. For instance there are known issues going from MDAC 2.5 to 2.6/2.7. What are the pre-XP and XP MDAC versions and service...

Just a couple of possibilities: has anyone (eg. the admin) set up an EM connection as sa on his workstation or on the server itself? Maybe logging on...

UMLNOTE? Is that a user-created table in msdb? I've never heard of it. Do you know what it's for? Maybe it can be simply dropped to eliminate the...

There's an MS article that may be related ("INF: New Concurrency and Scheduling Diagnostics Added to SQL Server" at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;319892). It relates to both SQL2000 Sp3 and...

Damn full stops.

Try: http://www.umachandar.com/technical/SQL70Scripts/UtilitySPs/Main17.htm

Damn full stops.

Try: http://www.umachandar.com/technical/SQL70Scripts/UtilitySPs/Main17.htm

There's a couple of errors. It appears your temporary table CITY has a column called "desc". DESC is a reserved word, so best to use "description" or "[desc]".

Secondly,...

You'll have the least amount of problems using DTS import/export wizard. Select the source server/database and the destination server/database and choose to Copy Objects and Database between SQL Server...

You can perform non-logged operations in certains situations, but not for the scenario you've described I'm afraid.

An option is to extend Umachandar's SQLDMO table scripting example at http://www.umachandar.com/technical/SQL70Scripts/UtilitySPs/Main17.htm. Using it as the basis, extend it down to the index level and let SQLDMO...

Okay, I understand your situation now. Better you than me.

As for the corruption, even dodgy data should not cause SQL Server corruptions - it should...