In SQL Server 2008 you can find if a database is online of offline by querying databases system view. A simple query such as this one gives me a list of all databases on my server and the second column shows if the database is online or offline.

SELECT Name, state_desc
FROM sys.databases

On my server [...]

SQL Server by default follows Windows password policy requirements for SQL Server Login accounts. This forces you to follow the same policy for SQL Server logins as you would for windows logins and this is a good thing. But sometimes you want to bypass that validation maybe to get a test login in place. You [...]

If you are creating a SQL Server login using a script then it is advisable to check if the login you are creating already exists. If you do not do this then SQL Server will throw an error. For example if I execute this statement when a login with name test_user already exists, I will [...]