Creating indexes
Let’s start this section with a summary of some basic terminology used in indexes, some of which may already have been mentioned in previous chapters of the book, as follows:
- Heap: A heap is a data structure where rows are stored without a specified order. In other words, it is a table without a clustered index.
- Clustered index: In SQL Server, you can have the entire table logically sorted by a specific key in which the bottom, or leaf level, of the index contains the actual data rows of the table. Because of this, only one clustered index per table is possible. The data pages in the leaf level are linked in a doubly linked list (that is, each page has a pointer to the previous and next pages). Both clustered and nonclustered indexes are organized as B-trees.
- Nonclustered index: A nonclustered index row contains the index key values and a pointer to the data row on the base table. Nonclustered indexes can be created on both heaps and clustered...
