Question

I’m using SQL Server 2000 and i’m trying to run an update query to a linked server but it is really slow.

It seems that it may be an indexing issue but i’m yet to figure out how to add indexes to linked servers

Does anyone know if this is possible?

Answer 1

Indexes are not, properly speaking, part of linked servers.

• Indexes are, in one sense, properties or attributes of tables. (You can’t have an index without a table, but you could have a table without an index.)
• Linked Servers are little more than stored connection between SQL Server instances

You would use a linked server to “locate” the tables you wish to work with, on this server or another, but whether or not those tables have indexes to optimize the queries (or, as @JNK points out, to perhaps slow them down) is outside the scope or mandate of the linked server. If the tables are appropriately indexed, those indexes will be used; if not, then they won’t.

(If you’re referring to optimization issues when joining tables “across” a linked server, that’s an advanced topic that I am not familiar with.)