Well here's something I never knew. When you declare a table variable it does get instantiated into tempdb.dbo.sysobjects. I was under the impression it wouldn't. If you run this code...declare @junk table(i int)
select *from tempdb.dbo.sysobjectswhere name not like 'sys%'
... you can see it happening. I found this and a few other interesting table variable nuggets at INF: Frequently Asked Questions - SQL Server 2000 - Table Variables.
Microsoft recently released a list of the largest SQL Server databases in production. Topping the list is a 5 TB monster from Verizon Communications. Actually Verizon appears 6 times on the top 24. It seems they've made a pretty big commitment to SQL Server. It scales down pretty quickly from the top though. #24 on the list is “only” 512GB. I guess if I want to win this award I'll have to get more data or drastically reduce my storage efficiency. Hello images in the database!