Example
Indexes can have several characteristics that can be set either at creation, or by altering existing indexes.
CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ix_clust_employee_id ON Employees(EmployeeId, Email);
The above SQL statement creates a new clustered index on Employees. Clustered indexes are indexes that dictate the actual structure of the table; the table itself is sorted to match the structure of the index. That means there can be at most one clustered index on a table. If a clustered index already exists on the table, the above statement will fail. (Tables with no clustered indexes are also called heaps.)
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX uq_customers_email ON Customers(Email);
This will create an unique index for the column Email in the table Customers. This index, along with speeding up queries like a normal index, will also force every email address in that column to be unique. If a row is inserted or updated with a non-unique Email value, the insertion or update will, by default, fail.
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX ix_eid_desc ON Customers(EmployeeID);
This creates an index on Customers which also creates a table constraint that the EmployeeID must be unique. (This will fail if the column is not currently unique - in this case, if there are employees who share an ID.)
CREATE INDEX ix_eid_desc ON Customers(EmployeeID Desc);
This creates an index that is sorted in descending order. By default, indexes (in MSSQL server, at least) are ascending, but that can be changed.
