Types of indexes
Sorting in relational databases makes no sense. Even though this statement sounds strange, it comes from the set theory that forms a theoretical base of relational databases. However, sorting is still needed when the database engine has to find out proper records from a table efficiently. When no sorting structure is present, the engine needs to scan over all records to recognize which of them are a candidates for the result of a certain query. An index is a type of object bringing sorting and seeking possibilities over unsorted relational data.
SQL Server provides several types of indexes. The most traditional are B-tree indexes, but columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012 and enhanced with every new version ...
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