RPK's questions

I am using Windows Server 2008 R2. I have two hard disks attached. The second hard disk contained two partitions (E and F). While running the Windows Server Backup I gave the path to backup the primary partition (C) on a schedule to one of the above partitions.

The backup schedule was running successfully until today I manually run the scheduled backup. I was shocked to see the message "Formatting..". Suddenly both the partitions of the other drive were lost. I could see Windows Server Backup merged the two partitions and created a dedicated backup partition.

Is there a way to recover those lost partitions?

For the first time, I am using a 64-bit OS (Windows 2008 Server R2). I want it to act as an application server and a database server. I want to know whether all the 32-bit applications, specially Visual Studio, Crystal Reports and SQL Server, work without problems in x64 OS or not. What considerations to take while migrating a 32-bit application to a 64-bit environment?

I wrote a stored procedure to insert a record. I added "Begin Transaction" just above the Insert Query and execute the query. I noticed that another application that was showing a web page with records from the same table, hanged by the time the insert completed.

Why Begin Transaction locks the entire table? Writers should not block Readers. It should be ON by default.

I am using SQL-Server 2005 Express. I also want to know how Oracle and MySQL handles the same situation.

We have a server in our office that has been converted to a remote server by assigning it a dedicated IP address. A major government organization is connected to it 24x7 and this server is processing concurrent requests from all over the state.

This server was initially configured for Version 2 of .NET. We want to install a new application which is built on Version 3.5 or 4 of .NET. I want to know whether both versions of .NET Framework along with Crystal Reports can work on the same server or not?

What additional configuration is needed?

I have few sample databases but they are quite small in size. I want to create a database with records upto 50GB. I want to learn many aspects of the database and also want to test our application's performance against it.

How to gather random data?

Take this scenario:

Suppose the customer has no backup of Oracle 9i or 10g database. The customer wants to move the database from one PC to another. The other PC has a fresh installation of Oracle.

How to move the data and other files and attach to the new installation? In this scenario, we don't have any type of backup, neither a dump nor any other type.

What is the difference between MySQL Generally Available release and Development Release? Can a Development Release be used for production database?

If the repository is contained in a folder, is it sufficient to take the backup of this folder instead of typing the commands to create a dump?