Definitely agree with the last sentence. I did some dev and dba work for a shop a couple of years ago, and inconsistencies like this were brutal. One...

inactive. Generally speaking, there is no reason for a row initially existing were it not to be "active". Flagging it as inactive is a soft deletion. SELECT imho

Nice article! You might want to point out that, on the file system, you can either run the package as a known user (such as scheduled job), or an...

smssboost.com another nice euro utility, with a free community edition. does the color coding and a lot of other useful stuff

One of the best way to validate backups - restore them onto the servers your developers are using as often as makes sense in your environment, preferably daily.