Understanding DBCC SHOWCONTIG
DBCC SHOWCONTIG is a wonderful tool which helps you to understand quite a bit more about your system than is obvious at first glance. And, frankly, the documentation doesn't use terminology that makes it very obvious either. So, this article will focus on a few of the big ideas behind the tool using SQL Server, and how you can use it to better understand what is going on inside your SQL Server box. Probably one of the most significant performance problems found in databases is centered around table data fragmentation. One situation that may be analogous to table fragmentation might be an index at the end of a large book. A single index entry in such a book might point to several pages scattered throughout the book. You must then scan each page for the specific information you require. This differs significantly from the index of the phone book which stores its data in sorted order. A typical query for the name "Jones" might span multiple consecutive pages, but are always ...