Why is this an Index Scan and not a Index Seek?

Question

Here\'s the query:

SELECT      top 100 a.LocationId, b.SearchQuery, b.SearchRank
FROM        dbo.Locations a
INNER JOIN  dbo.LocationCache b ON a.LocationId          


        

Answer 1

I did a quick test and came up with the following

CREATE TABLE #Locations
(LocationID INT NOT NULL ,
CountryID INT NOT NULL ,
[Type] INT NOT NULL 
CONSTRAINT PK_Locations
        PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( LocationID ASC )
)

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [LocationsIndex01] ON #Locations
(
    CountryID ASC,
    [Type] ASC
)

CREATE TABLE #LocationCache
(LocationID INT NOT NULL ,
SearchQuery VARCHAR(50) NULL ,
SearchRank INT NOT NULL 
CONSTRAINT PK_LocationCache
        PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( LocationID ASC )

)

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [LocationCacheIndex01] ON #LocationCache
(
    LocationID ASC,
    SearchQuery ASC,
    SearchRank ASC
)

INSERT INTO #Locations
SELECT 1,1,1 UNION
SELECT 2,1,4 UNION
SELECT 3,2,7 UNION
SELECT 4,2,7 UNION
SELECT 5,1,1 UNION
SELECT 6,1,4 UNION
SELECT 7,2,7 UNION
SELECT 8,2,7 --UNION

INSERT INTO #LocationCache
SELECT 4,'BlahA',10 UNION
SELECT 3,'BlahB',9 UNION
SELECT 2,'BlahC',8 UNION
SELECT 1,'BlahD',7 UNION
SELECT 8,'BlahE',6 UNION
SELECT 7,'BlahF',5 UNION
SELECT 6,'BlahG',4 UNION
SELECT 5,'BlahH',3 --UNION

SELECT * FROM #Locations
SELECT * FROM #LocationCache

SELECT      top 3 a.LocationId, b.SearchQuery, b.SearchRank
FROM        #Locations a
INNER JOIN  #LocationCache b ON a.LocationId = b.LocationId
WHERE       a.CountryId = 2
AND         a.[Type] = 7

DROP TABLE #Locations
DROP TABLE #LocationCache

For me, the query plan shows to seeks with a nested loop inner join. If you run this, do you get both seeks? If you do, then do a test on your system and create a copy of your Locations and LocationCache table and call them say Locations2 and LocationCache2 with all the indexes and copy your data into them. Then try your query hitting the new tables?