What is the difference between ALTER INDEX and DBCC DBREINDEX?

Question

Is the only difference between

ALTER INDEX [index_name] on [object_name] REBUILD with (ONLINE=OFF, FILLFACTOR=90)

and

DBCC DBREINDEX([dbname], 90) 

just that the DBCC command will reindex all of the indexes on all of the tables in the database?

Answer 1

The DBCC command is a consistency checker utility inside of SQL Server whereas ALTER is a DDL SQL command. The DBCC REINDEX command was deprecated in a previous version so it is not as robust as the new ALTER INDEX command is today. There is more functionality in the ALTER INDEX than the DBCC REINDEX commands:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188388.aspx

Happy indexing!

Answer 2

The first is current usage, the second was deprecated in SQL 2005.