SQL Server 2005 - Understanding ouput of DBCC SHOWCONTIG

Question

I'm seeing some slow performance on a SQL Server 2005 database. I've been doing some research regarding SQL Server performance but I'm having difficulty fully understanding the output of SHOWCONTIG and would be very grateful if someone could have a look and offer some suggestions to improve performance.

TABLE level scan performed.

• Pages Scanned................................: 19298

• Extents Scanned..............................: 2424

• Extent Switches..............................: 3829

• Avg. Pages per Extent........................: 8.0

• Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count].......: 65.16% [2439:3830]

• Logical Scan Fragmentation ..................: 8.40%

• Extent Scan Fragmentation ...................: 35.15%

• Avg. Bytes Free per Page.....................: 912.1

• Avg. Page Density (full).....................: 88.41%

Answer 1

It gives information about how the table looks on disc - and is extremely useless do locate your performance bottleneck. Your db could need some optimization, but I doubt it is the source of your problems. http://www.sql-server-performance.com/articles/dba/dt_dbcc_showcontig_p1.aspx has info how to understand it.