From the course: Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Essential Training

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Basics of indexes

Basics of indexes

- [Narrator] In this section, we're going to talk about indexes in SQL Server 2016. An index is a copy of information from a table, an index is smaller than a table, and indexes can be presorted. These characteristics of being smaller than a table and being presorted allow us to search indexes more quickly. So when we need to search for information in a particular column on SQL Server, if that column has an index, the machine can choose to search the index rather than search the table. Because the index is smaller, it can be searched faster, and because it's already sorted, it can be searched faster. So for example if we're searching for some text that starts with the letter z, the machine would be smart enough to start at the bottom of the index knowing that's where the zs are going to be. SQL Server 2016 supports a number of types of indexes. We have clustered, nonclustered, columnstore, spatial, XML, and full-text indexes.…

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