Chapter 6. Indexes: Internals and Management

Kalen Delaney, with Kimberly L. Tripp and Paul S. Randal

Microsoft SQL Server doesn’t have a configuration option or a knob that allows you to make it run faster; there’s no magic bullet. However, indexes—when created and designed appropriately—are probably the closest thing to a magic bullet. The right index, created for the right query, can take query execution time from hours down to seconds. There’s absolutely no other way to see these kinds of gains—adding hardware, or tweaking configuration options often only give marginal gains. What is it about indexes that can make a query request drop from millions of I/Os to only a few? And does just any index improve performance? Unfortunately, great performance ...

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