Actually, since he was effectively doing SELECT * ... it still has to go pull the rows from the table after seeking the index. This likely isn't a huge problem

Actually, since he was effectively doing SELECT * ... it still has to go pull the rows from the table after seeking the index. This likely isn't a huge problem though. To prevent going back to the table in this case, you'd either need the index I mentioned to be the primary key, or a construct like INCLUDE (which mysql appears to lack). See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188783.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188783.aspx