Category: Execution Plans

Somebody Set Up Us The Column

This is an okay trick to keep in mind when you need to use order by on a large table.

Of course, we care about order by for many very good reasons, especially when …

Short Answer

If you have selective predicates earlier in the index that filter a lot of rows, the SARGability of trailing predicates matters less.

	CREATE INDEX shorty ON dbo.a_table(selective_column, non_selective_column);

	SELECT COUNT(*) AS records
	FROM dbo.a_table AS a
	WHERE selective_column