• A very useful article. I would just like to comment on the area of Page splits that was discussed. To get around the page split problem to a degree use the FILL FACTOR and PAD INDEX to set the initial level of data in the pages or when rebuilding. Levels are from 0-100%. Depending on whether the table is heavy on reads or writes as to the% of the page that is initially filled.

    I was unaware that heaps could not be fragmented and the explanation on how SQL Server uses forward pointers was very interesting. Thanks for the article

    Mark