Is a non-clustered index on an int column considered more performant than one on a decimal or datetime column?
Is a non-clustered index on an int column considered more performant than one on
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Is a non-clustered index on an int column considered more performant than one on a decimal or datetime column?
In some ways: yes.
An
INTis only 4 bytes – so moreINTs will fit on a single 8K page in SQL Server.DATETIMEuses 8 bytes – so fewerDATETIMEvalues are store on a single page, or for the same number ofDATETIMEs, you need more pages, hence you get more disk I/O and thus less performance.How much of a difference there is, is up to more detailed measurement, however – for anything under millions of rows, the difference most likely will be negligable. If your queries do benefit from an index on that
DATETIMEcolumn – I wouldn’t hesitate adding it (again: unless you’re dealing with multi-million row tables… then you might need more detailed investigations)