Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Checking Best Practices Compliance

You can implement policies that check for SQL Server best practices. For example, databases can be configured with the autoclose and autoshrink options. Although these options have their place on some systems, they are not recommended to be enabled in production environments because the autoclose option causes a time delay while the database is opened by a connection trying to access it. This can lead to timeouts. The autoshrink option can lead to fragmentation and is in general not recommended. A policy can check for these settings and other settings to ensure that all your databases are following best practices.