I find that auto_update statistics in SQL Server is a really good thing.  Without it, many third-party applications would simply fall over from lack of preventative maintenance.  With it, they are able to run for extraordinarily long periods of time without really needing a full-time DBA to check up on the databases.   Having said ...

I'm very excited about the new Management Data Warehouse coming in SQL Server 2008 (which was called Performance Studio at one point), but keep in mind there are lots of available tools in the current versions. One of the students in my class last week put together this list of his favorites. Note that some of the tools can be used together. For ...

You might encounter a situation, under a very heavy workload, where processing for certain transactions starts out very efficiently, but over time becomes much less efficient.    A good place to start troubleshooting is, of course, PerfMon.  But PerfMon can fail to reveal the culprit, since the CPU can remain stable and moderate ...