I have used this method for years. Even with busy and/or large databases, I can move a database server to a new piece of hardware with only about 10 minutes...

SQL 2005? 2000?

Are master and the other system databases going to have the same drive letter/path on the new box?

If so, it should be fairly straightforward. Start SQL Server in...

Standard drive letters are nice. But, one place that you are forced use different letter is on Microsoft Cluster Services clusters. Each instance on a cluster must have its own...

Why can the user preferred names be saved in the database with the 'official' versions of the names? Why would you trust a number of GUI's to translate everything consistently?

You...

I am trying to understand the point of letting the GUI do the translating.

For instance, I have a database that contains the transactional data for one of the systems...

If you have a code WHS123 that is a 'local distribution warehouse', it may have many translations into local languages, but...

Why wouldn't you place the language translations in tables?

Do you really trust that every application running against your database is going to decoding correctly? For the same reasons, you would...

Each instance has a unique service name. Named instances are named something like MSSQL$MyInst.

So, just run NET START MSSQL$MyInst from the command line.

My LiteSpeed backup and restores are at least three times faster than the equivalent native operations were.

This is one of the worst practices from design and performance standpoints.

First, design-wise, why give up foreign keys? As mentioned in an ealier post, that is the WHOLE POINT...

<<In that case the only correct way of stopping the server is to use the cluster administrator tool. All methods mentioned in the article would create problems (server would try...

I would agree. I have never had good luck using network or USB devices to directly backup SQL Server databases. When using network storage, the backups would appear to complete....

To approximate backup/restore times, you really would have to run benchmarks on your own configuration. Even then, there are a lot of other facters that need to be taken into...

Exactly. The typical sequence is backup the transaction log immediately before doing a full backup. This transaction log backup will rarely be needed in a restore situation because of its...

I wouold agree with Andy's comment that making columns case-sensitive may be the best of both worlds.

I guess that my real issue is that making the choice to implement a...