Earlier today I received following email.

“Dear Pinal,

[Removed unrelated content]

We looked at your script and found out that in your script of disabling indexes, you have only included non-clustered index during the bulk insert and missed to disabled all the clustered index. Our DBA[name removed] has changed your script a bit and included all the clustered indexes. Since our application is not working.

When DBA [name removed] tried to enable clustered indexes again he is facing error incorrect syntax error.

We are in deep problem [word replaced]

[Removed Identity of organization and few unrelated stuff ]“

I have replied to my client and helped them fixed the problem. What really came to my attention is the concept of disabling clustered index. Let us try to learn a lesson from this experience.

In this case, there was no need to disable clustered index at all. I had done necessary work when I was called in to work on tuning project. I had removed unused indexes, created few optimal indexes and wrote a script to disable few selected high cost indexes when bulk insert (and similar) operations are performed. There was another script which rebuild all the indexes as well. The solution worked till they included clustered index in disabling the script.

Clustered indexes are in fact original table (or heap) physically ordered (any more things – not scope of this article) according to one or more keys(columns). When clustered index is disabled data rows of the disabled clustered index cannot be accessed. This means there will be no insert possible. When non clustered indexes are disabled all the data related to physically deleted but the definition of the index is kept in the system.

Due to the same reason even reorganization of the index is not possible till the clustered index (which was disabled) is rebuild. Now let us come to the second part of the question, regarding receiving the error when clustered index is ‘enabled’. This is very common question I receive on the blog. (The following statement is written keeping the syntax of T-SQL in mind) Clustered indexes can be disabled but can not be enabled, they have to rebuild. It is intuitive to think that something which we have ‘disabled’ can be ‘enabled’ but the syntax for the same is ‘rebuild’. This issue has been explained here: SQL SERVER – How to Enable Index – How to Disable Index – Incorrect syntax near ‘ENABLE’.

Let us go over this example where inserting the data is not possible when clustered index is disabled.
USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- Create Table
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TableName](
[ID] [int] NOT NULL,
[FirstCol] [varchar](50) NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_TableName] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
([ID] ASC)
)
GO
-- Create Nonclustered Index
CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_NonClustered_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName]
([FirstCol] ASC)
GO
-- Populate Table
INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName]
SELECT 1, 'First'
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'Second'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'Third'
GO
-- Disable Nonclustered Index
ALTER INDEX [IX_NonClustered_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] DISABLE
GO
-- Insert Data should work fine
INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName]
SELECT 4, 'Fourth'
UNION ALL
SELECT 5, 'Fifth'
GO
-- Disable Clustered Index
ALTER INDEX [PK_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] DISABLE
GO
-- Insert Data will fail
INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName]
SELECT 6, 'Sixth'
UNION ALL
SELECT 7, 'Seventh'
GO
/*
Error: Msg 8655, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The query processor is unable to produce a plan because the index 'PK_TableName' on table or view 'TableName' is disabled.
*/
-- Reorganizing Index will also throw an error
ALTER INDEX [PK_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] REORGANIZE
GO
/*
Error: Msg 1973, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot perform the specified operation on disabled index 'PK_TableName' on table 'dbo.TableName'.
*/
-- Rebuliding should work fine
ALTER INDEX [PK_TableName] ON [dbo].[TableName] REBUILD
GO
-- Insert Data should work fine
INSERT INTO [dbo].[TableName]
SELECT 6, 'Sixth'
UNION ALL
SELECT 7, 'Seventh'
GO
-- Clean Up
DROP TABLE [dbo].[TableName]
GO


I hope this example is clear enough. There were few additional posts I had written years ago, I am listing them here.

SQL SERVER – Enable and Disable Index Non Clustered Indexes Using T-SQL

SQL SERVER – Enabling Clustered and Non-Clustered Indexes – Interesting Fact

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)