• sorry Jeff I have to disagree, even if the clustered index is on an indentity column then the clustered index is actually the entire table, regardless of the index being defined on an int or bigint, so if the next couple of columns are varchars and the values( length of these) change during editing you may well get page splits if you cannot perform an inplace update, in this case a fill factor may help avoid splits.

    Crud... you're right, Colin... I forgot about the eventuality of Updates like this because I'm so bloody entrenched in ETL processes where the data is imported and never changes... thank you for the correction.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)