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Good Additions. I would also point out that if devs mess with indexes they definitely need to know the difference between clustered and nonclustered. I've seen atrocities due to a simple misunderstanding of this (guess what happens when you confuse the two and implement the opposite!)


Use non-clustered, right? clustered is just for massive operations with distributed databases and junk, right?


Clustered is directly related to the physical order of the records. Non-clustered is a logical order that uses pointers to the physical location. Only one clustered is allowed per table.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_(database)


The concept also does not exist in some databases. Oracle, IIRC, does not have the notion of a clustered index. SQL Server does. Another illustration of why you should not assume that all relational databases work the same way.


DB2 supports clustering, and Oracle has a similar concept: http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/8i/IndexOrganizedTables....

You are definitely right about each RDBMS having their own quirks though! Solid advice: know what you are working with and its nuances.




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