Online index rebuild or transactional offline DDL: which keeps schema-change rollback safer?
I'm planning a schema migration on SQL Server (Enterprise Edition, recent version) that alters a large, heavily queried table. Two documented approaches are on the table: an online index rebuild with ONLINE = ON , which permits concurrent DML, or an offline change wrapped in BEGIN TRANSACTION so the DDL can roll back if anything fails mid-deployment. The ten
microsoftsqlserver