In general it is not a best practice to perform SHRINK database operation on a production server, atleast regularly! Sometimes it may be compulsory to keep them sized in order to ensure the disk storage is not compromised for any sudden changes to databases ETL processes, coming to the point by design...
Here is the incentive for the SQL Server users (this new year), you may be aware then using SP_HELPINDEX or SP_HELP could give some part of information on the indexes and database objects. But to know more about depedant columns you need to query INFORMATION_SCHEMA views or sys.index_columns. Kalen Delaney...
As a DBA you should now how locking works with tables and how best you can make use of indexing enhancements within SQL Server 2005 version. Until SQL 2000 there was a limited availability of documentation on the guidelines even in the Books online and most of the times we have to depend upon the web...
For a SQL Server database having an index is always beneficial and from performance point of view too. But how about the clustered index which is occupying space on the database that is not used by any of the queries in the database. The Query Optimizer thinks that column statistics are useful, there...