1. SQL Server Indexed Views - Speed Up Your Select Queries: Part 1 - CodeProject
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SQL Server Indexed Views - Licence
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19 May 2011
Speed Up Your Select Queries: Views
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By andrewwasfy | 19 May 2011 | Article
SQL SQL-Server DBA Dev Beginner
An introduction to SQL Server Indexed Views.
Article Browse Code Stats Revisions Alternatives 4.46 (6 votes) 4
History about views
Views are a virtual table defining a query against one or more tables. Data isn’t stored in the
database and the result set is determined while the view is executed.
What’s an Indexed View?
An indexed view has a unique clustered index. The clustered index is stored in SQL Server
and updated like any other clustered index, providing SQL Server with another place to look
to potentially optimize a query utilizing the indexed view. Queries that don’t specifically use
the indexed view can even benefit from the existence of the clustered index from the view. In
the developer and enterprise editions of SQL Server, the optimizer can use the indexes of
views to optimize queries that do not specify the indexed view. In the other editions of SQL
Server, however, the query must include the indexed view and specify the hint NOEXPAND to
get the benefit of the index on the view. If your queries could benefit from having more than
one index on the view, non-clustered indexes can also be created on the view. This would
supply the optimizer with more possibilities to speed up the queries referencing the columns
included in the view.
Where to use them?
Indexed views have both a benefit and a cost. The cost of an indexed view is on the
maintenance of the clustered index (and any non-clustered indexes you may choose to add).
One must weigh the cost to maintain the index against the benefit of query optimization
provided by the index. When the underlying tables are subject to significant inserts, updates,
and deletes, be very careful in selecting the indexes (both table and view) that will provide
the greatest coverage across your queries for the lowest cost. Typically, environments that
are best suited for indexed views are data warehouses, data marts, OLAP databases, and the
like. Transactional environments are less suitable for indexed views. Look for repeating joins
utilizing the same columns, joins on large tables, aggregations on large tables, and repeating
queries as potential candidates for indexed views. Be careful of creating indexed views where
the result set contains more rows than the base tables as this will be counterproductive.
How to create them?
A view that is to be indexed has to be created with schema binding. This means that once the
indexed view is created, the underlying tables cannot be altered in any way that would
materially affect the indexed view unless the view is first altered or dropped. It also means
that all the tables referenced in the view must be referenced by their two-part name
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/199058/SQL-Server-Indexed-Views-Speed-Up-Your-Select-Quer[08/29/2012 4:20:35 PM]

2. SQL Server Indexed Views - Speed Up Your Select Queries: Part 1 - CodeProject
(schemaname.tablename). Below is an example of the CREATE statement for an indexed
view, MyView , and its underlying table, MyBigTable. The table is first created, then the view
that references two of the table’s three columns, and finally the unique clustered index on the
view making it an indexed view.
CREATE TABLE OAGTable(
ID INT PRIMARY KEY,
Depart VARCHAR(3),
arrival VARCHAR(3),
DurationinMin int )
GO
CREATE VIEW MyView WITH SCHEMABINDING AS
SELECT ID, Duration
FROM dbo. OAGTable
WHERE DurationinMin > 300
GO
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX idx_MyView ON MyView(DurationinMin)
Once this index is created, the result set of this view is stored in the database just like any
other clustered index. Any query that explicitly uses the view will be able to take advantage
of the index on the view. Queries that contain a predicate similar to the view and that fall
into the range defined by the view may also reap the optimization rewards of having that
index available (assuming the execution cost is non-trivial). Consider the following query:
SELECT ID
FROM OAGTable
WHERE DurationinMin > 400
Even though the query does not use the indexed view, the optimizer has the option of using
the clustered index created on the view if it provides better performance than the clustered or
non-clustered indexes on the base table. If you want the optimizer to always choose the
indexed view over the base tables when optimizing a query containing an index view, you
must use the hint NOEXPAND . Conversely, if you’d like to see how a query containing an
indexed view would perform utilizing the base tables instead, you can specify the option
EXPAND VIEWS , thus saving you the time substituting the base tables yourself.
Constraints
An index cannot be created on just any view. Several constraints exist that a view must meet
in order for the index creation to be successful. We discussed WITH SCHEMABINDING and
two-part table names above. Here are some other constraints:
The view must have been created with certain SET options, such as
QUOTED_IDENTIFIER and CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL set to ON .
The session creating the index must also have the correct SET options.
Any user-defined function referenced by the view must have been created using WITH
SCHEMABINDING .
The view must be deterministic (consistently providing the same result given the same
input).
The base tables must have been created with the proper ANSI_NULLS setting.
The result set of the view is physically stored in the database, thus storage space for
the clustered index is also a constraint to consider.
In addition to this, there are constraints on the contents of the view. For instance, the view
may not contain EXISTS or NOT EXISTS , OUTER JOIN , COUNT(*) , MIN , MAX , subqueries,
table hints, TOP , UNION , and much more. Check the SQL Server Development Center on
MSDN for a complete listing.
References
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc917715.aspx
License
This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code
Project Open License (CPOL)
About the Author
andrewwasfy
Software Developer
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3. SQL Server Indexed Views - Speed Up Your Select Queries: Part 1 - CodeProject
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Majisa
Egypt
Member
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My vote of 4 Abed-elfattah Yacoub 0:57 6 Aug '11
My vote of 2 kornakar 21:39 19 May '11
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/199058/SQL-Server-Indexed-Views-Speed-Up-Your-Select-Quer[08/29/2012 4:20:35 PM]