You realize that you have to rebuild your indexes when you do that, right? Only use SHRINKDB if you need to get back space you're not going to use for...

Got consumable data? (CREATE TABLE/INSERT scripts)??? Surely you've figured out how to do that by now. Unless you want just guesses instead of tested code.

Can you post your CREATE TABLE and INSERT scripts so we have a little bit of sample data? Invoices and . InvoiceLineItem structures are pretty standard. If you post the...

This might be a helpful read:
https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2013/09/index-maintenance-sql-server-rebuild-reorganize/

Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.
Go directly here and read: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

You'll get MUCH better answers if you read the article and follow the instructions when...

I guess I'll try to play around with it over Christmas or something... after I rebuild my poor laptop. Thanks!

Is it possible to append anything to the Property column without corrupting the report? Right now, it looks like this:

<Properties> 
<Language>en-US</Language>  <HasUserProfileQueryDependencies>False</HasUserProfileQueryDependencies>  <HasUserProfileReportDependencies>False</HasUserProfileReportDependencies>  <PageHeight>279.4</PageHeight>
  <PageWidth>215.9</PageWidth>
 ...

Sounds like you want use EXISTS, but it's hard to tell without some sample data (CREATE TABLE/INSERT scripts) and an expected output.

So index the Year and Month columns, and then read up on INCLUDE ?

you need to use a filter like this to be able to use your index:

WHERE [DateField] BETWEEN '01-Jan-2017' AND '31-Dec-2017'

Try indexing your date column and then...

There are a bunch of stored procedures that are executed against your tables, right? Maybe use Querystore or something to figure out which queries are being executed most frequently. Look...

Look at the columns you filter and join on. Try indexing those and compare the statistics of your queries before and after...

try
- indexing the fields you're filtering on.
- limiting the columns returned
- add RAM, like to 32GB. 8GB for SQL Server is just painful.

Others may disagree, but I don't know why you would store an instance of a non-event. It's going to make your fact table much larger than it could be. And...