I'm working on performance tuning my SQL Server 2008 database and am using the output from various DMVs to identify missing indexes, indexes that aren't being used, etc.
I am mainly using these 3 scripts (from SQLServerCentral.com) that rely on DMV data that SQL Server provides:
The Ultimate Missing Index Finder
The Ultimate Duplicate Index Finder
The Ultimate Index Usage Reporter
When trying to create new indexes, I know that I need to be smart and try to group many of the suggestions into as few indexes as possible by creating them just right so that they can do a decent job of serving a few different queries vs. creating a separate index for each query when the only difference may be the included columns, etc.
So I wanted to get the community's thoughts and see if people can answer a few questions about reading the DMV results and structuring the new indexes.
Does the order of the included columns in an index matter?
Take the following two index suggestions. What would you do to try to make 1 to fit both?
object_name equality_columns inequality_columns included_columns
Appointment [FranchiseId], [AppointmentTypeId] [CustomerId], [ApptDateTime] NULL
Appointment [FranchiseId], [AppointmentTypeId] [ApptDateTime] [CustomerId]
If I have lots of index suggestions with the same equality and inequality fields but different included fields, is it better to include more fields or go with less included fields? Again, the goal is to create 1 index vs.