Sandra, did you ever hear back on your question?
In our agency it's require that all database manipulation be done through TSQL scripts with strict separation of duties. Because of this our enterprise geodatabases are kept on another SQL Server instance. I've explained that industry "best practices" can't always be applied or strictly applied geodatabases. The first, that you cannot create a SDE geodatabase from scratch using only TSQL. The response from above was, "ESRI doesn't know what they are doing and we should find another GIS system to replace it." Really, and I hear it at least once a month.
As the SDE administrator I do let a few users own their own SDE database on theseparate SQL Server instance I manage. It's only for SDE/SQL databases. Another thing that the rest of the IT Data shop doesn't understand is that ArcGIS is the "Application." The GIS analyst is not developing software, therefore they don't need the traditional separated dev, test, and production databases. Maybe the user needs to do a one time analysis and needs the power and scalability of SQL Server. The analyst isn't necessary going to know ahead of time the schemas for the final tables let alone all the intermediate tables. Therefore, the requirement that create all the empty table schemas in advance doesn't work. That doesn't mean that SDE/SQL databases can't be allowed in the enterprise.
I'd also like to hear from others on this too.
