You might have a lack of memory, slow disks, poor code, too hard to tell.

I'd suggest that you start with looking at heavily run queries and trying to tune them....

Note that I've received a complaint on this thread.

I don't think anyone has crossed a line, but I see a few posts that are close. Please remember that this is...

LOL, that kind of defeats the purpose of connecting to master.

I think the only thing you can likely do here, is connect as admin, then pause the server. That prevents...

You shouldn't need to be in the database to change to multiple users. Connect to the master database as a system administrator and then alter the properties of the database.

You could purchase a license to SQLSentry, which will help you handle this and prevent them colliding with each other. Otherwise, I like Mani's solution. Just look at history, schedule...

I'm a little confused about what you mean by the awards and then the two approaches. Can you post a bit of sample data and explain how you see the...

I'd go with what pradeep has suggested.

I think certifications *could* help, but they don't, at least not as they're configured. They'd need to be more practical, with a variety of things to solve.

However Jay has a...

Yep, at about 16 months, just learned to walk, started to dance, hasn't slowed down in 7 more years 😀

OK, I'm confused, are you writing the query in Access?

It's not clear what linked servers you have, and where you are querying. If the tables are in Access, then you...

Wow, excellent information. Ed, you need to write this up as a short article!

Do you mean the same backup to 2 locations (having a copy), or striped as in 1/2 on one drive, 1/2 on another?

Either way, running a backup to a remote...

Just to be clear, you should not be regularly running shrinks. This is for emergencies only. Keep free space in your files to handle normal operations.

We have been debating about starting a sister site here for Oracle. Good to know there's a call for it.

You can see some of Mr. Denny's work at SearchSQLServer and we link to his articles here at times.

I think most of these books will work. Just be sure that...