Index This: All About SQL Server Indexes

Indexing Basics: Learn ‘Em Here!

Indexing in SQL Server can make all the difference in your performance— great indexing can make your application nimble and fast. Poor indexing can slow your whole SQL Server to a terrifying crawl.

Here are links to our most popular posts on indexing in SQL Server. These posts have diagrams, videos, and scripts to help you get your B-Plus trees into fighting shape.

Introduction to SQL Server Indexes

Not sure what indexes are all about? There’s tons of terminology that can be very confusing.

Jes Schultz Borland explains the differences between clustered indexes, nonclustered indexes, covering indexes, and more in SQL Server Index Terms.

Heaps: What Happens Without a Clustered Index?

Do you know WHY it’s a best practice to create clustered indexes on tables in SQL Server, and what can happen if you don’t?

Kendra Little shows you the weirdness that can happen if you forget a clustered index in “Heaps in SQL Server: Performance, Maintenance, and Your Sanity.”

DBA Darwin Awards: Index Edition

Could you be making a newbie indexing mistake without knowing it?

Find out in Brent Ozar’s video, “DBA Darwin Awards: Index Edition“.

Index Tuning Cycle: Scripts to Create the Right Indexes

Want to see an index tuning cycle in action?

In “How to Design Smarter Indexes” Kendra Little shows you how to use scripts to find what indexes SQL Server is asking for. The scripts will also show you whether or not your new indexes are being used.
Watch the 30 minute video and see the scripts here.

Indexing for Deletes

When you first start tuning it’s easy to focus on indexing for select statements. Index tuning requires even more trickery and cleverness, however.

Learn more in Jeremiah Peschka’s article, Indexing for Deletes.

Should You Partition those Indexes?

Are you thinking about table partitioning? Learn about partitioned indexes and what to consider in Kendra Little’s post, “How to Decide if You Should Use Table Partitioning.”

Unused Indexes, Missing Indexes, and More!

Want the scripts and only the scripts? Check out the community supported Index Dynamic Management View Queries: http://www.brentozar.com/go/indextuning/

Just Show Me the Blitz

The sp_Blitz™ script gives you a run-down of health issues for your databases– and it snoops around for index health, too. Get sp_Blitz™.