Overview

The purpose of this short article is to explain the use of a native SQL command that can show you for a database table the currently allocated indexes and:

• the primary keys.
• whether they are clustered or non clustered.
  
  

This can be a very useful approach in understand the current database structure and in the context of troubleshooting any potential performance issues. 

Steps

• The SQL command to use (with additional parameters specified for the database and table) is:

EXEC sp_helpindex

• If we relate this to Snow License Manager, to see what indexes are assigned to the tblComputer table, run the following in SQL: 

USE SnowLicenseManager
EXEC sp_helpindex 'dbo.tblcomputer'
GO

• NOTE: Either include the USE 'DatabaseName' before the statement or select the database context from what ever database querying tool you're using.  Specifying the database and table name (such as SnowLicenseManager.dbo.tblComputer) will result in an error. 

 

• This is an example of the returned results: