Introduction The following Tips and Guidelines are very important from the performance perspective of your SQL Server development or production database. The best way to achieve optimum performance benefits is to experiment with the following guidelines while using/viewing a query execution plan, both with and without implementing the respective tip/guideline. Tips and Guidelines • As a common practice, every table should have a clustered index. Generally, but not always, the clustered index should be on a column that monotonically increases, such as an identity column or some other column where the value is unique. In many cases, the primary key is the ideal column for a clustered index. • Indexes should be measured on all columns that are frequently used in WHERE , ORDER BY , GROUP BY , TOP and DISTINCT clauses. • Do not automatically add indexes on a table because it seems like the right thing to do. Only add indexes if you know that they will be used by the querie...