Forcing Index Selection with Table Hints

In addition to locking hints that can be specified for each table in a query, SQL Server 2014 allows you to provide table-level hints that enable you to specify the index SQL Server should use for accessing the table. The syntax for specifying an index hint is as follows:

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SELECT column_list FROM tablename WITH (INDEX (indid | index_name [, ...]) )

This syntax allows you to specify multiple indexes. You can specify an index by name or by ID. It is recommended that you specify indexes by name as the IDs for nonclustered indexes can change if they are dropped and re-created in a different order than that in which they were created originally. You can specify an index ID of 0, ...

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