Posted by Zamdrist on 03/23/07 17:08

I am tasked with maintaining a large database still on SQL Server 7.0.
Performance is an issue not surprisingly and I've targeted two rather
large tables to see what I can do with the indexes.

The 2 tables are described as follows:

MatterConflicts:
Fields: MatterConflicts varchar(16), Matters varchar(16), HitMatters
varchar(16), IsInclude varchar(1)
Index: MatterConflicts

MatterConflictHits:
Fields: MatterConflictHits varchar(16), MatterConflicts varchar(16),
ColumnLabel varchar(40), Hit varchar(100)
Index: MatterConflictHits

Now MatterConflicts row count is approaching 500K and
MatterConflictHits is approaching 1 Million rows. There are only one
index on each table, each for the table's primary key. The Matters
field in MatterConflicts table joins back with a table that users
access directly.

Question is, would it be beneficial to add, or modify the existing
indexes for these tables to include both the primary and foreign keys,
as well as an additional field?

Doesn't seem to be to be very beneficial to have an index that only
includes the primary key. So for example I'm thinking of creating an
index for MatterConflicts that includes the fields: MatterConflicts,
Matters, and HitMatters.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks...

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