Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Missing Index Feature Versus Database Engine Tuning Advisor

The missing indexes dynamic management objects are a lightweight, server-side, always-on feature for identifying and correcting potential indexing oversights. The Database Engine Tuning Advisor, on the other hand, is a comprehensive client-side tool that can be used to assess the physical database design and recommend new physical design structures for improving performance, including not only indexes, but also indexed views or partitioning schemes.

The Database Engine Tuning Advisor and missing indexes feature can possibly return different recommendations, even for a single-query workload. The reason is that the missing indexes dynamic management objects’ index key column recommendations ...