Can you shrink a database while in use?

What happens when you shrink a database?

Shrinking data files recovers space by moving pages of data from the end of the file to unoccupied space closer to the front of the file. When enough free space is created at the end of the file, data pages at end of the file can be deallocated and returned to the file system.

Why you should not shrink your database?

Shrinking of data files should be performed even more rarely, if at all. Here's why: data file shrink can cause *massive* index fragmentation (of the out-of-order pages kind, not the wasted-space kind) and it is very expensive (in terms of I/O, locking, transaction log generation).

Does shrinking a SQL database improve performance?

But shrinking may affect your database performance significantly, if not properly done. Shrinking will increase fragmentation and will cause any DB operation costly. Rebuild indexes is necessary after DB shrink to reduce fragmentation and increase performance.

Is Shrinking database good?

The major problem with the Shrink operation is that it increases fragmentation of the database to very high value. Higher fragmentation reduces the performance of the database as reading from that particular table becomes very expensive. One of the ways to reduce the fragmentation is to rebuild index on the database.