Questions[sql](server)

People keep telling me that in order to improve an SQL server's performance, buy the fastest hard disks possible with RAID 5, etc.

So I was thinking, instead of spending all the money for RAID 5 and super-duper fast hard disks (which isn't cheap by the way), why not just get tonnes of RAM? We know that an SQL server loads the database into memory. Memory is wayyyy faster than any hard disks.

Why not stuff in like 100 GB of RAM on a server? Then just use a regular SCSI hard disk with RAID 1. Wouldn't that be a lot cheaper and faster?

Is there an equivalent of MySQL's SHOW CREATE TABLE in Postgres? Is this possible? If not what is the next best solution?

I need the statement because I use it to create the table on an remote server (over WCF).

I'm trying to grant all privileges on all tables of a given database to a new postgres user (not the owner). It seems that GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE my_db TO new_user; does not do that. After running said command successfully (as the postgres user), I get the following as new_user:

$ psql -d my_db
my_db => SELECT * FROM a_table_in_my_db;
ERROR:  permission denied for relation a_table_in_my_db

Two questions:

1) What does the command above do, then, if not granting all permissions on all tables on my_db?

2) What's the proper way to grant all permissions on all tables to a user? (including on all tables created in the future)

Is there any way to export a Microsoft SQL Server database to an sql script?

I'm looking for something which behaves similarly to mysqldump, taking a database name, and producing a single script which will recreate all the tables, stored procedures, reinsert all the data etc.

I've seen http://vyaskn.tripod.com/code.htm#inserts, but I ideally want something to recreate everything (not just the data) which works in a single step to produce the final script.

I am writing a shell script which makes calls to psql using 2 forms... one is by command (-c), the other is by file (-f).

e.g. psql -c "create table foo (bar integer)"

psql -f foobar.sql

One difference between these forms is that a call by command (-c) returns a non-zero exit code if an error is encountered, while a call by file (-f) always seems to return zero.

I'm wondering if there is a workaround for this behaviour? (i.e. return non-zero if an error occurs while executing a file).

Thanks.