Detecting Unused Indexes in SQL Server

Hello everyone,

In this article, I will try to give information about detecting unused Indexes in SQL Server.

In SQL Server, in some cases, you may want to detect unused Indexes.

You can easily do this using the code below.

SELECT o.name AS ObjectName,
       i.name AS IndexName,
       i.index_id AS IndexID,
       dm_ius.user_seeks AS UserSeek,
       dm_ius.user_scans AS UserScans,
       dm_ius.user_lookups AS UserLookups,
       dm_ius.user_updates AS UserUpdates,
       p.TableRows,
       'DROP INDEX ' + QUOTENAME(i.name) + ' ON ' + QUOTENAME(s.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(dm_ius.object_id)) AS 'drop statement'
FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats dm_ius
    INNER JOIN sys.indexes i
        ON i.index_id = dm_ius.index_id
           AND dm_ius.object_id = i.object_id
    INNER JOIN sys.objects o
        ON dm_ius.object_id = o.object_id
    INNER JOIN sys.schemas s
        ON o.schema_id = s.schema_id
    INNER JOIN
    (
        SELECT SUM(p.rows) TableRows,
               p.index_id,
               p.object_id
        FROM sys.partitions p
        GROUP BY p.index_id,
                 p.object_id
    ) p
        ON p.index_id = dm_ius.index_id
           AND dm_ius.object_id = p.object_id
WHERE OBJECTPROPERTY(dm_ius.object_id, 'IsUserTable') = 1
      AND dm_ius.database_id = DB_ID()
      AND i.type_desc = 'nonclustered'
      AND i.is_primary_key = 0
      AND i.is_unique_constraint = 0
ORDER BY (dm_ius.user_seeks + dm_ius.user_scans + dm_ius.user_lookups) ASC;
GO

When you run the above code, you will see a result similar to the one below.

As you can see, we have detected unused indexes.

Good luck to everyone in business and life.