How has index maintenance changed?
After having attended PASS Summit and seeing all the new features coming it out, it can be very easy to overlook the basics–they are boring. These features have been around forever. This may be true, but they still play an important role and ignoring them won’t help get you those fancy new features any time soon.
In this episode, our topic is index maintenance, with an emphasis on what has changed or what might change. Is the query store feature going to impact the way we maintain our indexes? We invite one our favorite guests, Sean McCown back to talk with us and give some of his thoughts.
Episode Quotes
“You can’t really change the math of re-indexing and maintenance.”
“And part of the problem is not with that, but with not having time to do maintenance is allowing business people to run the show.”
“Rebuilding an index is absolutely rebuilding the index pages and putting them in the order that they are supposed to be.”
“It’s not the stuff that they add that I think is ridiculous. It’s the stuff they don’t put in.”
Listen to Learn
00:06 Introduction about the speaker and brief outline of the episode topic
01:12 Updates on minion ware and what’s changing on re-indexing
05:00 Problems that will arise of having no time to do maintenance
10:18 Fragmentation of indexes
15:04 Does SSD and other premium storages change the data access?
19:17 How to determine how the fill factor should be different?
22:51 SQL Server: Analytics on database
27:49 The difference between re-indexing, meaning rebuilding, reorganizing an index, or statistics
33:02 What stands out with minion re-index?
43:27 Re-index 2.0 features
49:00 SQL Family
Our Guest
![sean mccown 1536x1536](/media/ecsjvfgt/sean-mccown-1536x1536.jpg?width=212&height=212&rnd=133374633424970000&quality=80)
Sean McCown
Sean McCown is a DBA, international speaker, and Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server with over 20 years of experience in high-end databases. He is also founder and co-owner of MinionWare LLC, creator and author of the wildly popular Minion Maintenance and Minion Enterprise tools.
SeanMcCown on Calendly and LinkedIn, @HeyMinionWare on Twitter.
Meet the Hosts
![carlos chacon headshot](/media/fjwfpnlm/carlos-chacon-headshot.png?width=150&height=150&rnd=133374633297500000&quality=80)
Carlos Chacon
With more than 10 years of working with SQL Server, Carlos helps businesses ensure their SQL Server environments meet their users’ expectations. He can provide insights on performance, migrations, and disaster recovery. He is also active in the SQL Server community and regularly speaks at user group meetings and conferences. He helps support the free database monitoring tool found at databasehealth.com and provides training through SQL Trail events.
![eugene meidinger headshot](/media/11tdoyed/eugene-meidinger-headshot.jpg?width=150&height=150&rnd=133374633331230000&quality=80)
Eugene Meidinger
Eugene works as an independent BI consultant and Pluralsight author, specializing in Power BI and the Azure Data Platform. He has been working with data for over 8 years and speaks regularly at user groups and conferences. He also helps run the GroupBy online conference.
![kevin feasel headshot](/media/orxfss5g/kevin-feasel-headshot.jpg?width=150&height=150&rnd=133374633356330000&quality=80)
Kevin Feasel
Kevin is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and proprietor of Catallaxy Services, LLC, where he specializes in T-SQL development, machine learning, and pulling rabbits out of hats on demand. He is the lead contributor to Curated SQL, president of the Triangle Area SQL Server Users Group, and author of the books PolyBase Revealed (Apress, 2020) and Finding Ghosts in Your Data: Anomaly Detection Techniques with Examples in Python (Apress, 2022). A resident of Durham, North Carolina, he can be found cycling the trails along the triangle whenever the weather's nice enough.
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