>Thanks, so is index bloating a potential issue if we have this very big application running for years and most of its original indexes had been there since then?
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>Also, if you do it nightly, are you shutting down the application when doing it? We have a 24/7 up time and rarely can we obtain a shutdown confirmation, which would only apply for deployments. How would you negotiate with that?
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>Also, another factor is the sum of all those index procedures would take about 2 to 2.5 hours. So, this is definitely not something I can shut down the application on. The procedures are getting more robuts about those shutdowns. So, they are getting more and more difficult to obtain.

One question, about how many tables are we talking about, and how many rows in the big tables? Also, are you doing any partitioning?

On the 24x7, who deemed that, the client? Reason I ask, unless we are talking about a mission critical database (say, medical transactions or stock transactions), I think 24x7 is sometimes a pipe dream. Even Wells Fargo (my bank) has a brief period overnight where they are down.