Marios Philippopoulos (10/16/2008)
Thank you both for your replies.I'm not sure I follow though. How would the non-clustered indexes get fragmented? The table population is done all at once, in a sequential fashion by the clustered PK. Wouldn't the non-clustered-index pages be also filled sequentially in a "from-top-to-bottom" fashion?
There should be no page splits in this scenario.
The page inserts are sequential for the clustered index only. Since you're using other columns in the non-clustered indexes, it would be a "random insert" scenario on those indexes, unless the key column in the non-clustered index also happen to follow EXACTLY the same ordering as the ID (which would be rather unusual).
Since you're doing a single load, your best bet is to actually then drop all non-clustered indexes before the load, and rebuild them from scratch when the load is done. In which case - load them as Jeff was recommending (100% fill factor, since there will be NO fragmentation).
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?