Recent installments of our SQL Server 2005 Express Edition series have been discussing its implementation of Full Text Indexing. This article focuses on data searches, which leverage existing indexes, taking into account such features as noise words and thesaurus files.  Read more...

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...

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Finds the largest dupe-sets of one or more columns of a single table or derived table. Great for finding hoggy parameter combinations for perf-testing queries within stored procedures!  Read more...

Reports index length stats for indexes who's lengths exceeding parametrized thresholds (defaults to 0 - get all) for total length and seek length, optionally filtering schemas and tables.  Read more...

Gets single-column and cumulative-column selectivity stats and @Top largest dupe sets for each cumulative column stepping for a set of one or more columns for a table.  Read more...

Searches database-wide for multiple indexes in the same table which has the same column as the first seek key. Optionally limits to LIKE wildcard patterns of table and schema names.  Read more...

Reports index stats, index size+rows, member seek + include columns as two comma separated output columns, and index usage stats for one or more tables and/or schemas.  Read more...

Lists details for all indexes on one or more tables / schemas, including row count and size. This version outputs the member seek + include columns as two comma separated output columns.  Read more...

Lists details for all indexes on one or more tables / schemas, including row count and size. The non-pivot version also gives data type and other details for the columns.  Read more...

Reports stats on what the query optimizer records in the DMVs as missing indexes and what it says the cost savings will be if they were present. Can limit by table / schema name patterns.  Read more...

Checking XML indexs with a sample.  Read more...

This stored procedure is capable of performing defragmentation indices with avg_fragmentation_in_percent greater than the threshold passed.  Read more...

Do you use the maintenance plans or hate them? Wish they would do more? Curious about how they work under the hood? Cmon, you gotta read this one! Trust us, it's not another "how-to" article! Well, maybe just a little bit!   Read more...

A monster book at 980 pages, it's written in 'how-to' format and has a ton of good material. Andy gave it the once over for us and reports back - see what he thinks!   Read more...

Quite a while back Andy wrote an article about why not using primary keys and clustered indexes was a worst practice. Chris weighs in this week with a great article that gives some more in depth info on clustered indexes and why he thinks they should be used on every table.   Read more...

This white paper discusses the basics of indexes, such as density and selectivity, effects of many versus few indexes, long versus short keys, covering indexes, and how the SQL Server optimizer chooses indexes  Read more...

Andy sits down with an entry level book to see if he should use it at work as a teaching aid. Did he like it? Should you buy it? Read the review now!   Read more...

In this follow up article Andy looks at how maintenance plans report errors and how they actually accomplish what they do. A little snooping with Profiler reveals all!   Read more...