This paper describes the principles and practice of Declarative Management --- a new approach to the management of database systems. The standard approach to database systems management involves a brittle coupling of interactive operations and procedural scripts. Such ad hoc approach results in incorrect administration, which leads to increased management costs. In the Declarative Management paradigm, a user specifies "what" the desired state is, and the system figures out "how" to get there and stay there. Declarative Management represents a fundamental step towards the goal of a self-managing database system. It also has the potential to significantly lower both administrative error and cost. An initial implementation of Declarative Management has been released with the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database product, and the paper covers the implementation design as well.