Mitch Wheat - Treat the cause, not the symptoms!

Out of the box, SQL Server’s maintenance plans enable you to set up common maintenance tasks such as running a CHECKDB, backing up up databases and logs, rebuilding indexes etc.

In terms of rebuilding indexes, there are two flavours: a reorganise and a full-blown rebuild (Reorganizing and Rebuilding Indexes). Reorganising an index is usually done when the index is not heavily fragmented.

It is not uncommon to find a maintenance plan that first full rebuilds all indexes (regardless of fragmentation level, but more on that in a moment), and then subsequently updates all statistics. Not only is this unnecessary, it is actually worse than simply rebuilding all indexes!  The update statistics task samples your data, whereas a full index rebuild also updates the associated statistics but does so by performing a FULL SCAN of your data. That’s right: updating statistics with the default setting of sample after a full index rebuild will leave you with (potentially) less accurate statistics.

Rather than rebuilding all indexes regardless whether they need it or not, Ola Hallengren’s maintenance script contains a production tried-and-tested stored procedure SQL Server Index and Statistics Maintenance for rebuilding and reorganizing indexes and updating statistics. It has ability to run for a set period to fit into tight maintenance windows, set fragmentation threshold levels, and update statistics, such as unindexed column statistics that are not updated as part of an index rebuild. Highly recommended.