Nonclustered Index Seek Showplan Operator
The Index Seek operator uses the seeking ability of indexes to retrieve rows from a nonclustered index.
The Argument column contains the name of the nonclustered index being used. It also contains the SEEK:() predicate. The storage engine uses the index to process only those rows that satisfy the SEEK:() predicate. It optionally may include a WHERE:() predicate, which the storage engine will evaluate against all rows that satisfy the SEEK:() predicate (it does not use the indexes to do this).
If the Argument column contains the ORDERED clause, the query processor has determined that the rows must be returned in the order in which the nonclustered index has sorted them. If the ORDERED clause is not present, the storage engine searches the index in the optimal way (which does not guarantee that the output will be sorted). Allowing the output to retain its ordering may be less efficient than producing nonsorted output.
Index Seek is a logical and physical operator.
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Graphical execution plan icon
See Also
Tasks
How to: Display an Actual Execution Plan
Concepts
Logical and Physical Operators Reference
Creating Nonclustered Indexes
Displaying Execution Plans by Using the Showplan SET Options (Transact-SQL)