Question

I have a table in which I use reference counting for removing obsolete rows. In order to do this efficiently, I would like to create an index that only indexes the rows in the table, where the reference count is 0. Is this possible, or am I better off using a view, or something else?

Answer 1

Sounds like you want to use a Filtered Index. Maybe something like:

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX MyIndex
ON MyTable(MyColumn)
WHERE ReferenceCount = 0

You can learn more about them here