DBCC DBREINDEX vs ALTER INDEX REBUILD in SQL Server

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Open the SQL Agent job history on an instance that has been running for a decade and you will still find DBCC DBREINDEX in a nightly maintenance step, quietly doing its job. It works — which is exactly why nobody has touched it. But it has been deprecated for the better part of twenty years, it locks tables it does not need to lock, and it cannot do the things modern index maintenance takes for granted. This post compares it to its replacement and shows the one-afternoon migration to ALTER INDEX.

ALTER INDEX on SQL Server Scripts

DBCC DBREINDEX vs ALTER INDEX REBUILD in SQL Server