"Do not use auto-shrink."

It's plain, simple advice. And it's the advice that I, and many others, often give to people that ask about regular maintenance or settings for their SQL Server. In a recent discussion with someone, they noted that there wasn't any other way to say this.

Or is there?

One of the things that we have done here often at SQLServerCentral is publish multiple articles on the same topic. We have more than one article on attaching databases, a few on setting up application roles, and numerous other topics. People sometimes ask me why we do that. Why not just publish one?

I'd turn it around and say why publish at all? Isn't all this stuff (or most of it) in Books Online? It is in there, but there are a lot of people that don't understand the way it's written, or don't relate to it. The documentation is, well, documentation and it's written dryly. It presents the information in a straightforward, but rather boring way.

A good article leads the reader along, and it helps them to understand a topic by speaking to them, and allowing them to relate to the subject. We all relate in different ways, and learn in different ways. The  various authors each speak to a different group of us on a topic. To me, that's a great way to spread the knowledge out to a wider group of people working with SQL Server.

While the advice "don't shrink" is simple enough to say, it's the reasons, the explanation, and the tone behind those words can be presented differently. So it makes sense for different people to present it in their own unique way.

Steve Jones

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