Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Administrator's Companion

Index Types

SQL Server has a number of different index types such as clustered indexes, nonclustered indexes, included column indexes, indexed views, full-text indexes, and XML indexes, each with their own purpose and characteristics. By understanding how indexes work, you will be better able to create and tune indexes. Based on the type of index, the way it works might be different.

Clustered Index

A clustered index stores the table data in sorted order in the leaf page of the index based on the index key. Because of the requirement that the clustered index store the data in sorted order, there is the need to constantly rearrange pages in the index. As data is inserted into the database, space might be needed to add these new pages into the index. ...