Understanding Indexes
Indexes have been enhanced again in SQL Server 2008. SQL Server 2005 first introduced a new feature called online indexing, and now SQL Server 2008 takes indexes to another level with spatial indexes, hierarchical indexes, and filtered indexes. Online indexing was a big leap forward because it allowed you to update indexes while users were utilizing those same indexes. Before SQL Server 2005, indexes had to be taken offline in order to be updated. But what are all these indexes anyway? That question will be answered in this section.
The "Indexes Defined" section of this chapter will explain the basic concepts of an index and how they improve database performance. It will then explore each of the index types provided in SQL ...
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