•	Table should have primary key 
•	Table should have minimum of one clustered index 
•	Table should have appropriate amount of non-
clustered index 
•	Non-clustered index should be created on columns of 
table based on query which is running 
•	Following priority order should be followed when 
any index is created a) WHERE clause, b) JOIN clause, c) 
ORDER BY clause, d) SELECT clause 
•	Do not to use Views or replace views with original 
source table 
•	Triggers should not be used if possible, 
incorporate the logic of trigger in stored procedure 
•	Remove any adhoc queries and use Stored Procedure 
instead 
•	Check if there is atleast 30% HHD is empty - it 
improves the performance a bit 
•	If possible move the logic of UDF to SP as well 


•	Remove * from SELECT and use columns which are only 
necessary in code 
•	Remove any unnecessary joins from table 
•	If there is cursor used in query, see if there is 
any other way to avoid the usage of this (either by SELECT 
… INTO or INSERT … INTO, etc) 
There are few hardware upgrades can be considered as well 
like separating index on different disk drive or moving 
tempdb to another drive. However, I am not suggesting them 
here as they are not quick way to improve the performance 
of query.