Explain the way to shrink a Database

Question

Explain the way to shrink a Database?

Answer 1

This has historically been difficult to shrink any database except tempdb (since it is created fresh each boot time). The two ways commonly used have been:

1. Make sure that you have scripts for all your objects (several tools like SA Companion,  dbschema.pl or DB Artisan from Sybperl can create scripts by an existing database), then bcp out your data, drop that database, recreate this smaller and run your scripts, as well as bcp in your data.

2. Utilize a third-party tool such as DataTool's SQL Backtrack, that in essence automates the first process.
This technote draws a third possibility which can work in most cases.