Hi everybody,
In my VFP application I have a routine that deletes a bunch of records in a table and then has to create a bunch of records. To minimize the number of records marked as deleted I recycle records. Basically instead of deleting records I mark them in a field REC_STAT as "AVAILABLE" and when I need to add records I first check if "AVAILABLE" records exist and overwrite values there. This routine is kind of pain to maintain but I have learned to live with it.
Now I am converting this routine to SQL Server. Is it going to be a problem for SQL Server if I don't recycle deleted records. That is, if I simply delete when I need to delete and create new when I need to create new. I don't know if SQL Server automatically packs tables or it has to be done in a separate routine as done in VFP. To give you a ball park number of records/rows in this table is as following:
Maximum number of records 500,000
Percent deleted would be about 10%.
The above are real guess number and considerably larger than my typical customer database. But I wanted to know the worst impact of this situation.
Thank you in advance for any input.
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