There's clustering and then there's clustering. ;-)

The clustering to which this ng refers is server clustering, whereby one
server acts as the backup for another. The backup automatically picks up
when the primary server fails.

The clustering to which you refer is index clustering. This is basically
the physical sort order of your table. Thus, there can be - at most - only
one clustered index per table. Also, in SQL Server 2000, you can have
indexed views. Here, you create a unique clustered index on the view, which
materializes the view. You can also create nonclustered indexes on:

all tables
indexed views which already have their clustered index built.

The ITW will script the recommended indexes for you. You should save these
to a file which you can then run at any time.

--
Tom

----------------------------------------------------
Thomas A. Moreau, BSc, PhD, MCSE, MCDBA
SQL Server MVP
Columnist, SQL Server Professional
Toronto, ON Canada
www.pinnaclepublishing.com/sql
..
"Rob Oldfield" <rob@oldfield100_wow_freeserve_yikes_co_incredible !_uk> wrote
in message news:%237$nwAAIEHA.2260 (AT) TK2MSFTNGP09 (DOT) phx.gbl...
Hi all,

Some very basic questions here. I have a VB.Net app that is using an SQL 2K
server as it's data source. Everything is working fine but it's a little
slower than I would like. So I've just run the index tuning wizard over the
SQL instance that I'm using.

The result of that is a list of my tables specifying my existing indices
(it's pretty straightforward stuff, so just the existing PKs), each of which
has a tick in the 'clustered' column.

In addition, it's suggesting two new indexed views, one of which has a tick
in the 'clustered' column, the other doesn't.

My questions:
What is clustering? I've looked through books on-line but can't find
anything that explains it to me. Can somebody explain it or have a resource
that does?
Are my existing tables and views clustered? Or is the index tuning wizard
suggesting that I switch them (the tables) to be clustered? I've just set
them up in EM without doing anything clever.
And one last question that doesn't really fit this newsgroup, but hopefully,
isn't too off topic: so far I haven't told the index tuning wizard to
actually put its recommendations in place - will that just create the
relevant views; is there a way of seeing what those views look like before
taking this step; and, in general terms, is applying the results of the
tuning wizard a safe activity, or do I really need to back everything up
first?

Thanks for any help.