Chapter Summary

• Always evaluate different ways of implementing costly queries.

• Drop unused indexes.

• Typically, only de-normalize data that is not updated frequently.

• When measuring query performance, always include the query execution time as a secondary metric.

• Minimize the size of rows in tables and indexes.

• Create covered indexes for the most frequently executed queries.

• Don't forget to index foreign keys.

• Evaluate creating indexed views to cover entire queries or parts of queries.