Question

You manage a single Azure SQL Database on the General Purpose tier. A nightly ETL process causes significant index fragmentation and stale statistics, degrading query performance during business hours. Because Azure SQL Database has no SQL Server Agent, you need a fully managed, in-database way to schedule recurring index reorganization and statistics updates without provisioning additional Azure resources. Which approach should you use?

Accepted Answer

Create Elastic Jobs (elastic job agent) targeting the database to run T-SQL index and statistics maintenance on a schedule

Answer

Enable Automatic Tuning's CREATE INDEX option and rely on it to also rebuild indexes and refresh statistics on a schedule

Answer

Deploy an Azure Automation runbook that connects and runs ALTER INDEX and UPDATE STATISTICS commands nightly

Answer

Configure SQL Server Agent jobs within the Azure SQL Database to schedule the maintenance scripts