Expert Performance Indexing in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2022: Toward Faster Results and Lower Maintenance Both on Premises and in the Cloud

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023

E. Pollack, J. StrateExpert Performance Indexing in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2022https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9215-0_4

4. Fragmentation

Edward Pollack¹   and Jason Strate²

(1)

Albany, NY, USA

(2)

Hugo, MN, USA

 

A discussion of index internals must also address the impact of fragmentation on storage and performance. This chapter provides an overview of fragmentation, its impact on data storage, and how it can harm performance.

Page Fragmentation

SQL Server stores information in the database on 8 KB pages. In general, rows in tables are limited to that size; if they are smaller than 8 KB, SQL Server stores more than one row per page. One of the challenges with ...