So...with no responses maybe I should assume that no one else is trying to put as much on one workstation - or that no one else has been sucessful?

SQL 7.00.1063

Yes, I use linked servers via OLDEB (other SQL boxes) and ODBC (AS400).

No - I can't immediately retire the box or upgrade it.

Thanksf or the info.  RH

Thanks for the link.  It is not a direct hit because this server only has 51 databases, not 500.  But, you never know.  I will keep an eye on that...

Yes.  The same way maintenance jobs are able to write history to files in the log directory.  I'm curious if someone knows how SQL Server is doing that and if...

Yep, I completely spaced on the PK constraint check...  It was traversing PK_Heap for every insert to verify its uniqueness.  Also, thanks for pointing out...

Gotcha.  Thanks. RH

Also, those 1057 batches tracked by Profiler occurred in just 40 seconds. RH

While I would still love to hear exactly what the TASK MANAGER is here under the CMD column, it turns out to not have anything to do with my issue. ...

I found what I needed.  From the Microsoft website...

"...Microsoft SQL Server Standard edition will run on a four-processor server with dual-core processors, utilizing all cores on the processors, without requiring...

a,

I'm no expert on mainframes, but I believe mainframes are traditionally considered to be very large scale servers exclusively accessed by dumb terminals.  I think Steve's example speaks more to...

Luis, there are lots of reasons for and against virtualization.  And, I would agree, that virtualization may in fact introduce as much new overhead and maintenance time as it mitigates. ...

Interesting.  Thanks for all the info.  I have been curious about this because I am concerned about the new over-head being introduced into our DB designs since the advent of...

Ed, I'll admit that I am a bit confused by your response.  The two scenerios I described above were two different scenerios(I intended them to be opposing) that I had rattling...

Part of my confusion...  This is from BOL:

"For a clustered index, sysindexes.root points to the top of the clustered index. SQL Server navigates down the index to find the row...

David, based on your response, it looks like Scenerio 2 is correct. 

Essentially, the intermediate pages will be traversed (paged into memory and processed) based on the values of ID1...