Question

I have a large table (more than 10 millions records). this table is heavily used for search in the application. So, I had to create indexes on the table. However ,I experience a slow performance when a record is inserted or updated in the table. This is most likely because of the re-calculation of indexes.

Is there a way to improve this.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You could try reducing the number of page splits (in your indexes) by reducing the fill factor on your indexes. By default, the fill factor is 0 (same as 100 percent). So, when you rebuild your indexes, the pages are completely filled. This works great for tables that are not modified (insert/update/delete). However, when data is modified, the indexes need to change. With a Fill Factor of 0, you are guaranteed to get page splits.

By modifying the fill factor, you should get better performance on inserts and updates because the page won’t ALWAYS have to split. I recommend you rebuild your indexes with a Fill Factor = 90. This will leave 10% of the page empty, which would cause less page splits and therefore less I/O. It’s possible that 90 is not the optimal value to use, so there may be some ‘trial and error’ involved here.

By using a different value for fill factor, your select queries may become slightly slower, but with a 90% fill factor, you probably won’t notice it too much.