To do a regular ArcSDE Geodatabase Maintenance, you need to do the following:

1. Rebuild Indexes (you can use python scripting for ArcGIS 10.1)
2. Analyze (update statistics) (you can use python scripting for ArcGIS 10.1)
3. Compress (you can either use ArcCatalog 10.1 , Command Line, or Python)

of course to perform the listed activities you need to have all connections disconnected , which could be a problem if you want to perform maintenance in a “production” environment.

you can schedule these activities either daily or weekly, depends wither your environment is intensive in “editing”, since you will be having a lot of versions.

From practice, ArcSDE Compress will give optimum results when the editors are performing Reconcile and POST and delete their versions. Otherwise, you will not benefit a lot from the compress operation.