The following table summarizes the results from my last two blog entries, showing the CPU time used when performing 5 million clustered index seeks: In test 1, making the clustered index unique improved performance by around 40%. In test 2, making the same change reduced performance by around 70% (on 64-bit systems – more on that later).  ...

A seek can contain one or more seek predicates – each of which can either identify at most one row in a unique index (a singleton lookup) or a range of values (a range scan).  When looking at a query plan, we will often need to look at the details of the seek operator in the Properties window to see how many operations it is performing, and ...

If you look up Table Hints in Books Online, you’ll find the following statement: If a clustered index exists, INDEX(0) forces a clustered index scan and INDEX(1) forces a clustered index scan or seek. If no clustered index exists, INDEX(0) forces a table scan and INDEX(1) is interpreted as an error. The interesting thing there is ...