Article "Top Tips for Effective Database Maintenance" was just posted by

Paul S. Randal, SQL Server MVP, at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc671165.aspx

Provides a good background on physical optimization.

Here are a few changes to the order of operations:

1. Disable any maintenance jobs and any application access.

2. Backup all databases

New steps:

3. For tempdb, note the actual...

"SQL Server has encountered 1 occurrence(s) of I/O requests taking longer than 15 seconds to complete on file sql server 2005 "

This can be the result of an autogrow occurring,...

I found DTSRunDec here: http://www.sqlsecurity.com/Tools/FreeTools/tabid/65/Default.aspx but I cannot work out what I need to install to be able to compile it.

Does anyone have any info on that, or any other...

With an objective have having a reasonable size files that have sufficient free space to run the defragementation and support future needs, here are the detailed steps. The database...

When using DTSRun.exe with an encrypted command string (the ~Z option), I have encountered some strange behavior including execution of older package versions and security violations.

Appending "/!X /!C" to the...

"Can I just copy the .mdf and .ldf files to the 64-bit machine, attach and I'm good to go, or do I need to do something else?"

Be sure to detach...

As introduction to database physical storage is typically a Computer Science third year course and is studied in depth at the graduate level, this will be difficult to explain in...

You did not post the SQL you are running so it will not be possbile to review but here is some SQL with the results:

PhoneNo ...

The solution to reducing the size of a database file is a multistep process that can be quite complex due to some of the steps causing database fragmentation, which has...

Probably but to confirm, look at the configuration of the Windows Service named "SQLSERVERAGENT" on then "Log...

"The OP wants to know how to DISPLAY only the dates... "

Thanks Jeff, did not see that

Of course the correct answer is to perform formating in the interface component,...

SQL Server 2005 memory usage is documented and, unless set lower, will use all except 256Mb of available physical memory.

See SQL Server BOL on how to configure 'max server memory...

There was a very long forum post on various methods to get only the date portion from a datetime datatype. One of the most efficient was 1. subtract...

Reformated the SQL using http://www.sqlinform.com/ to allow easier analysis. Looks like there are some joins that do not have a corresponding "ON" statement, which will result in these joins...