Creating, Modifying, and Dropping Spatial Indexes

A spatial index can more efficiently perform certain operations on a column of the geometry or geography data type (a spatial column). More than one spatial index can be specified on a spatial column. This is useful, for example, for indexing different tessellation parameters in a single column.

There are a number of restrictions on creating spatial indexes. For more information, see Restrictions on Spatial Indexes.

To create a spatial index

• How to: Create a Spatial Index (SQL Server Management Studio)

• CREATE SPATIAL INDEX (Transact-SQL)

• How to: Create a Spatial Index (Visual Database Tools)

• How to: Configure the index create memory Option (SQL Server Management Studio)

To view information about an index

• How to: View All Indexes in a Table (SQL Server Management Studio)

• Viewing Index Information

To alter a spatial index

• ALTER INDEX (Transact-SQL)

  Important

  To change options that are specific to a spatial index, such as BOUNDING_BOX or GRID, you can either use a CREATE SPATIAL INDEX statement that specifies DROP_EXISTING = ON, or drop the spatial index and create a new one. For an example, see CREATE SPATIAL INDEX (Transact-SQL).

• How to: Modify an Index (SQL Server Management Studio)

• How to: Move an Existing Index to a Different Filegroup (SQL Server Management Studio)

• How to: Rebuild an Index (SQL Server Management Studio)

• How to: Reorganize an Index (SQL Server Management Studio)

To drop a spatial index

• DROP INDEX (Transact-SQL)

• How to: Delete an Index (SQL Server Management Studio)

• How to: Delete a Spatial Index (Visual Database Tools)