thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Data & Analytics · Advanced

Fill Factor

The percentage of each index leaf page that SQL Server fills when building or rebuilding an index, leaving the rest free for growth.

Definition

A lower fill factor, such as 80, leaves room for inserts and reduces page splits but uses more space and I/O for reads. The default of 0 (equivalent to 100) is ideal for read-only or ever-increasing keys.

Example

CREATE INDEX IX ON T(Col) WITH (FILLFACTOR = 80);

Exam tip

Lower the fill factor only for indexes that suffer frequent page splits from random inserts.

Related terms