ALTER TABLE:

ALTER TABLE <name> ALTER COLUMN <name> <type> ...

I rarely see .NET (or Java for that matter) developers who are good at databases. Most of them tends to lack the set oriented mindset which often is required to...

And, I would add: Is the data static (or populated on a schedule, like for instance a data warehouse, or is the data updated all the time?

Just trying to get the whole view: What scope and type of group is the group that don't work as intended; and: Is the group in the same domain as...

You could look for books by Itzik Ben-Gan, or look for his advanced courses.

It is much better to update the 20M records, since it is a theoretically correct design 😛

The time it takes depends on the options specified for update statistics (fullscan/sample), the speed of your IO subsystem, the amount of data to be read. 4 hours is indeed...

Og no changes are being made to those tables, I would use full factor 100%.

You can rebuild the inexes...

Please have a look at "Concatenating Row Values in Transact-SQL" in my signature.

A good place to start would be to look at the average row size in the leaf level (level 0) of the row size. This can be determined from sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats....

No offense intended: Let me Google that for you.

Disadvantage: More load (size and activity) on TempDB.

You can always use the same licensing as for physical servers on virtual ones, so if you use a HA technology which does not require a license on the passive/secondary...

Is SQL Server 2005 installed on the server? Please have a look at the following thread, it may be what you need.