A. For any access to "network resources" you need to run SQL Server under a user account and not the default LocalSystem account. You can check what userid that MSSQLSERVER is running under by looking at control panel/services highlighting...
A. This is information is only available from ANSI themselves and as far as I know is only available on paper (to discourage piracy). They charge for the information - they have to have some form of income stream after all...
A. This is as much a "religious" debate as a technical one. Both products are good (as are others such as DB/2, Informix, Sybase...). My advice would be to stick with whatever you have the technical skills/experience with, and don't change for...
A. The probable reason for this is that you're still on 6.5 and below. With this setup you can only shrink a database back to the last portion of log. So if you defined a database as 400Mb data, 100Mb log you can never shrink it. ...