Database Interview: What is fillfactor? What is the use of it ? What happens when we ignore it? When you should use low fill factor?
When you create a clustered index, the data in the table is stored in
the data pages of the database according to the order of the values in
the indexed columns. When new rows of data are inserted into the table
or the values in the indexed columns are changed, Microsoft® SQL
Server™ 2000 may have to reorganize the storage of the data in the
table to make room for the new row and maintain the ordered storage of
the data. This also applies to nonclustered indexes. When data is
added or changed, SQL Server may have to reorganize the storage of the
data in the nonclustered index pages. When a new row is added to a
full index page, SQL Server moves approximately half the rows to a new
page to make room for the new row. This reorganization is known as a
page split. Page splitting can impair performance and fragment the
storage of the data in a table.
When creating an index, you can specify a fill factor to leave extra
Database Interview: What are statistics, under what circumstances they go out of date, how do you update them?
Statistics determine the selectivity of the indexes. If an indexed
column has unique values then the selectivity of that index is more,
as opposed to an index with non-unique values. Query optimizer uses
these indexes in determining whether to choose an index or not while
executing a query.
Some situations under which you should update statistics:
1) If there is significant change in the key values in the index
2) If a large amount of data in an indexed column has been added,
changed, or removed (that is, if the distribution of key values has
changed), or the table has been truncated using the TRUNCATE TABLE
statement and then repopulated
3) Database is upgraded from a previous version
Database Interview: Difference between Index defrag and Index rebuild?
When you create an index in the database, the index information used
by queries is stored in index pages. The sequential index pages are
chained together by pointers from one page to the next. When changes
are made to the data that affect the index, the information in the
index can become scattered in the database. Rebuilding an index
reorganizes the storage of the index data (and table data in the case
of a clustered index) to remove fragmentation. This can improve disk
performance by reducing the number of page reads required to obtain
the requested data
DBCC INDEXDEFRAG - Defragments clustered and secondary indexes of the
specified table or view.
SQL Optimization Tips
• Use views and stored procedures instead of heavy-duty queries.
This can reduce network traffic, because your client will send to
server only stored procedure or view name (perhaps with some
parameters) instead of large heavy-duty queries text. This can be used
to facilitate permission management also, because you can restrict
user access to table columns they should not see.
• Use table variables instead of temporary tables.
Table variables require less locking and logging resources than
temporary tables, so table variables should be used whenever possible.
The table variables are available in SQL Server 2000 only.
• Try to use UNION ALL statement instead of UNION, whenever possible.
The UNION ALL statement is much faster than UNION, because UNION ALL
statement does not look for duplicate rows, and UNION statement does
look for duplicate rows, whether or not they exist.
• Try to avoid using the DISTINCT clause, whenever possible.
Because using the DISTINCT clause will result in some performance
degradation, you should use this clause only when it is necessary.
• Try to avoid using SQL Server cursors, whenever possible.
SQL Server cursors can result in some performance degradation in
comparison with select statements. Try to use correlated sub-query or
derived tables, if you need to perform row-by-row operations.
• If you need to return the total table's row count, you can use
alternative way instead of SELECT COUNT(*) statement.
Because SELECT COUNT(*) statement make a full table scan to return the
total table's row count, it can take very many time for the large
table. There is another way to determine the total row count in a
table. You can use sysindexes system table, in this case. There is
ROWS column in the sysindexes table. This column contains the total
row count for each table in your database. So, you can use the
following select statement instead of SELECT COUNT(*): SELECT rows
FROM sysindexes WHERE id = OBJECT_ID('table_name') AND indid < 2 So,
you can improve the speed of such queries in several times.
• Include SET NOCOUNT ON statement into your stored procedures to stop
the message indicating the number of rows affected by a T-SQL statement.
This can reduce network traffic, because your client will not receive
the message indicating the number of rows affected by a T-SQL statement.
Database Interview Question: What is Index Tuning?
One of the hardest tasks facing database administrators is the
selection of appropriate columns for non-clustered indexes. You should
consider creating non-clustered indexes on any columns that are
frequently referenced in the WHERE clauses of SQL statements. Other
good candidates are columns referenced by JOIN and GROUP BY operations.
You may wish to also consider creating non-clustered indexes that
cover all of the columns used by certain frequently issued queries.
These queries are referred to as "covered queries" and experience
excellent performance gains.
Index Tuning is the process of finding appropriate column for
non-clustered indexes.
SQL Server provides a wonderful facility known as the Index Tuning
Wizard which greatly enhances the index selection process.
Explain about Clustered and non clustered index? How to choose between a Clustered Index and a Non-Clustered Index?
There are clustered and nonclustered indexes. A clustered index is a
special type of index that reorders the way records in the table are
physically stored. Therefore table can have only one clustered index.
The leaf nodes of a clustered index contain the data pages.
A nonclustered index is a special type of index in which the logical
order of the index does not match the physical stored order of the
rows on disk. The leaf nodes of a nonclustered index does not consist
of the data pages. Instead, the leaf nodes contain index rows.
Consider using a clustered index for:
o Columns that contain a large number of distinct values.
o Queries that return a range of values using operators such as
BETWEEN, >, >=, <, and <=. o Columns that are accessed sequentially. o Queries that return large result sets. Non-clustered indexes have the same B-tree structure as clustered indexes, with two significant differences: o The data rows are not sorted and stored in order based on their non-clustered keys. o The leaf layer of a non-clustered index does not consist of the data pages. Instead, the leaf nodes contain index rows. Each index row contains the non-clustered key value and one or more row locators that point to the data row (or rows if the index is not unique) having the key value. o Per table only 249 non clustered indexes. 30. Disadvantage of index? Every index increases the time in takes to perform INSERTS, UPDATES and DELETES, so the number of indexes should not be very much. 31. Given a scenario that I have a 10 Clustered Index in a Table to all their 10 Columns. What are the advantages and disadvantages? A: Only 1 clustered index is possible.
Interview Questions: Indexes in SQL, What is Index? It’s purpose?
What is Index? It's purpose?
Indexes in databases are similar to indexes in books. In a database,
an index allows the database program to find data in a table without
scanning
the entire table. An index in a database is a list of values
in a table with the storage locations of rows in the table that
contain each value. Indexes can be created on either a single column
or a combination of columns in a table and are implemented in the form
of B-trees. An index contains an entry with one or more columns (the
search key) from each row in a table. A B-tree is sorted on the search
key, and can be searched efficiently on any leading subset of the
search key. For example, an index on columns A, B, C can be searched
efficiently on A, on A, B, and A, B, C.
Data Dictionary Queries for Oracle
For ORACLE
select * from sys.dba_objectswhere owner = 'scott'and object_type='TABLE'
SELECT owner, object_name, object_type FROM sys.dba_objectswhere object_type='SEQUENCE' and owner='scott';
