I have just published a four-part series for SQLPerformance.com on the Halloween Problem. Some of you will never have heard of this issue, and those that have might associate it only with T-SQL UPDATE queries. In fact, the Halloween problem affects execution plans for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and MERGE statements. This is a topic I have been ...

Can DELETE operations cause pages to split?  Yes.  It sounds counter-intuitive on the face of it; deleting rows frees up space on a page, and page splitting occurs when a page needs additional space.  Nevertheless, there are circumstances when deleting rows causes them to expand before they can be deleted.  The mechanism at ...