A big part of the DBA's skill set will be dictated by the job description itself- i.e. the workplace and installation context. For example, I've seen department installations managed...

We may be at odds. I'm imagining a fact table "items" with foreign keys to customers.

Using count to rollup a column will give you a tally of records...

Just add the measure as a count of the items. When you slice and dice by customer (in a front end tool such as ssms or proclarity, or an mdx...

In analysis services you mean?

If its just a matter of running a batch process regularly an executable or batch file started from scheduled tasks would work just fine.

You're right- I'd use stored procs for data access and wrap them in a data access layer that returns scalar types or framework objects. I'd then wrap these in...

If you are programming using a multithreaded environment like java or .net you can just run the long running query from a new thread. If you're in a single...

There's nothing wrong with employing base views for reporting purposes either. This is a standard practice and will make your life easier for the other 49 reports. Probably you'll...

To optimise this query, rewrite the cursor as a join, perhaps utilizing a second temp table, and ensure an index is employed for the join criteria - for example by...

You need the additional join here.

Also note that its better to wrap the sql code in a stored procedure for security and performance reasons.

Right click the database and choose "Tasks - Export Data". Choose "Next" then "Next" again. You will be in the "Destination" step. For a data destination, choose...