Indexing is important for improving performance, but do you know that a lack of indexes might actually cause things to stop working? Alok Dwivedi brings us a very interesting scenario where the lack of an index causes a problem with concurrency.  Read more...

Indexes are critical to good performance in SQL Server. However many people don't understand how indexes work and why they are important. MVP Gail Shaw provides us with an introductory article to explain the basics of indexing.  Read more...

This article demonstrates an Index Management strategy to tackle day to day performance issues due to improper indexes.  Read more...

In continuing with our series of tips on Best Practices for SQL Server I'm turning my sights on Maintenance. Specifically in this tip we will be discussing Index maintenance: when, if, why, and how are questions that will be addressed.  Read more...

Routine maintenance can keep index fragmentation to a minimum—with some help from an index-defragmenting script.  Read more...

When created and maintained correctly, indexes help SQL Server retrieve data quickly. See how to ensure your SQL Server environment is running up to speed.  Read more...

In this, the third of the four part series on persisting the rowset results from the indexing Dynamic Management Views cached in temporary internal SQL Server structures we will explore what is required to store the missing index-related metadata.  Read more...

The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database software provides table partitioning to make such operations more manageable.  Read more...

New author Nilav Ghosh brings us a performance tuning article to help your queries run better. This article examines how indexes can help reduce blocking.  Read more...

In this three-part series I'll look at what you can do to persist this data so you don't find yourself waiting for usage stats to compile over a reasonable period of time just so you can harness the power of the indexing DMOs in your performance tuning process.   Read more...

This article describes different ways of improving the performance of SQL Server queries, with a focus on index optimization.  Read more...

Just today, I was reviewing the indexing of a database used by a third-party application. As part of my review, I ran a script against it that is used to identify duplicate indexes. The script I used was written Paul Nielsen, the author of the SQL Server...  Read more...

There are certain requirements for creating indexes on computed columns and this tip shows you want needs to be done.  Read more...

For a book project I am working on, I have started compiling a list of reasons why heaps aren't usually a good choice when designing a database. Now, I didn't say that heaps are always bad, but in most cases, I think they should be avoided so pleae read the list to see why.  Read more...

I have always been of the personal opinion that all SQL Server tables have a clustered index. As part of the research I am doing on a new book on High Performance Index Maintenance , and on heaps specifically, I ran across this SQL Server Best Practices...   Read more...

Dynamic management views measure the effectiveness of indexes and discover fragmented indexes that may slow down SQL Server.   Read more...

Longtime author and SQL Server expert David Poole brings us a method to   Read more...

There are times that you do not want indexes to be updated and used. Brian Knight shows how you can accomplish this with a new SQL School video.  Read more...

When creating tables it is difficult to determine exactly how the data will be accessed. Therefore when clustered indexes are chosen they are often just the ID column that makes the row unique. This may be a good choice, but once the application has been used and data access statistics are available you may need to go back and make some adjustments to your tables to ensure your clustered indexes are providing a benefit and not a drain on your applications.   Read more...

This article describes how an index gets fragmented and the steps which a DBA can take to fix index fragmentation  Read more...

Indexes are critical to good performance in SQL Server. However many people don't understand how indexes work and why they are important. MVP Gail Shaw provides us with an introductory article to explain the basics of indexing.  Read more...

New author Nilav Ghosh brings us a performance tuning article to help your queries run better. This article examines how indexes can help reduce blocking.  Read more...

This article demonstrates an Index Management strategy to tackle day to day performance issues due to improper indexes.  Read more...