Chad Callihan takes a look at a preview feature:
There isn’t one set way to manage indexes. Maybe you use Ola Hallengren scripts. Maybe it’s something you put together yourself. Either way, there might be a big shift coming for SQL Server database administrators and how index management is handled.
Last month, Microsoft announced Automatic Index Compaction, which is in preview for Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Database in Fabric. Instead of utilizing something like Ola Hallengren scripts or your own homegrown setup to monitor and rebuild indexes, the database engine will continuously run in the background and handle indexes for you, hence the “automatic” in the name.
Read on to see how it works, as well as a note around page density and index fragmentation. But Jeff Moden makes a good point in the comments, so check that out.