Introduction
Page splits are one of those silent performance killers in SQL Server that many DBAs have heard about but rarely analyze in depth. On the surface, inserts might look harmless – rows keep getting added, queries return results, and no errors appear. But underneath, SQL Server is constantly managing how data is physically stored on 8KB pages, and each insert has the potential to fragment your index and degrade performance over time.
Inserts at the end of a table generally work smoothly. SQL Server simply appends the new row to the current last