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Demystifying Oracle's Clustering Factor

One of the more confusing statistics in Oracle is one called the clustering factor. Associated with an index, it's actually dependent on the table data, more specifically the distance between 'jumps' for a given index key. Commonly, a 'jump' is the number of blocks between rows containing the given index key starting with the first block found containing that key. If that sounds confusing don't despair, David Fitzjarrell explains in detail.

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The Importance of Maintenance on MSDB

MSDB is a system database used by SQL Server. MSDB stores all sorts of data, such as backup history, log shipping monitor history, SSIS packages and Service Broker queue data to name a few. Just like user databases, MSDB needs regular maintenance, including index optimizations and, more importantly, regular purging. In this article, Tim Radney looks at how neglecting your MSDB can negatively impact on your environment.

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Question of the Day

DBCC CHECKDB Limits I

When running DBCC CHECKDB on SQL Server 2025, can I specify only the Resource Database?

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