Change an Existing Index in SQL Server

With SQL Server, you can use the DROP_EXISTING clause to rebuild the index, add or drop columns, modify options, modify column sort order, or change the partition scheme or filegroup. Let us see how to rebuild the index and then add a column to an existing index

Drop and recreate an existing non-clustered index without changing the index definition

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Idx_TableName_SomeColumnID ON
TableName (SomeColumnID ASC)
WITH (DROP_EXISTING = ON)
GO

Rebuild an existing non-clustered index and adding a new column to the existing index

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX Idx_TableName_SomeID ON
TableName (SomeOtherColumn, SomeColumnID ASC)
WITH (DROP_EXISTING = ON)
GO

Read more on the DROP_EXISTING clause (search DROP_EXISTING on the page)

About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, MCSE, is the founder of DotNetCurry, DNC Magazine for Developers, SQLServerCurry and DevCurry. He has also authored a couple of books 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls and a new one recently at The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Suprotim has received the prestigous Microsoft MVP award for nine times in a row now. In a professional capacity, he is the CEO of A2Z Knowledge Visuals Pvt Ltd, a digital group that represents premium web sites and digital publications comprising of Professional web, windows, mobile and cloud developers, technical managers, and architects.

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