Reduce SQL Server table fragmentation without adding/dropping a clustered index?

Question

I have a large database (90GB data, 70GB indexes) that\'s been slowly growing for the past year, and the growth/changes has caused a large amount of internal fragmentation not o

Answer 1

You can maybe compact the heap by running DBCC SHRINKFILE with NOTRUNCATE.

Based on comments, I see you haven't tested with a permenent clustered index.

To put this in perspective, we have database with 10 million new rows per day with clustered indexes on all tables. Deleted "gaps" will be removed via scheduled ALTER INDEX (and also forward pointers/page splits).

Your 12GB table may be 2GB after indexing: it merely has 12GB allocated but is massively fragmented too.