Microsoft SQL Server 2016: Managing Indexes and Statistics

Course Overview

By carefully managing aspects of your database like indexes and statistics, you are able to better tune performance and identify potential issues. This course teaches you about index management tasks, such as identifying and repairing fragmentation, identifying and creating missing indexes, identifying and dropping underused indexes, and managing existing columnstore indexes. In addition, this course covers statistic management topics, such as identifying and correcting outdated statistics, using Auto Update Statistics, and statistics for large tables. This course is one of a series in the Skillsoft learning path that covers the objectives for the 70-764: Administering a SQL Database Infrastructure exam.

Target Audience

Database administrators and database professionals

Learning Objectives

• describe the types of indexes available in SQL Server and the importance of managing them properly
• detect fragmented indexes and determine the degree of fragmentation
• repair index fragmentation using SQL Server Management Studio
• repair index fragmentation using Transact-SQL
• use the Missing Indexes feature to identify missing indexes and to create them, if needed
• find and remove underutilized indexes
• describe the purpose of columnstore indexes, as well as why and when to use them
• improve columnstore index performance
• defragment columnstore indexes
• identify and correct outdated statistics
• describe the purpose and characteristics of the auto_update_statistics option
• implement Auto Update Statistics
• implement statistics for large tables
• manage indexes in SQL Server 2016