I have a table like this:
CREATE TABLE dbo.DiscountBarcodeList( ID int NOT NULL IDENTITY CONSTRAINT PK_DiscountBarcodeList PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, Discount int NOT NULL CONSTRAINT FK_DiscountBarcodeList_Discount FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES dbo.Discount (ID), CodeNumber int NOT NULL, AssignedEntity int NULL CONSTRAINT FK_DiscountBarcodeList_AssignedEntity FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES dbo.Entity (ID) ON DELETE SET NULL, BarcodeID AS CONVERT( char(10) , CAST(Discount AS binary(2)) + CAST(CodeNumber AS binary(3)) , 2), CONSTRAINT UQ_DiscountBarcodeList_DiscountCodeNumber UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED ( Discount ASC , CodeNumber ASC ));
The table will hold CodeNumber
s allocated for Discount
s beforehand and assigned to Entity
s on demand. Though not on the database level, the values of Discount
and CodeNumber
will be limited to 2 bytes and 3 bytes respectively. Those limitations, together with the unique constraint on (Discount, CodeNumber)
, will effectively make the generated BarcodeID
values unique as well.
The way this table is supposed to be used is, the application will be passing a @BarcodeID
to look up an @Entity
to assign to it. If the lookup is successful, then either the row's Entity
will be set to @Entity
, or the application will be notified that the @BarcodeID
is already taken, something along these lines:
BEGIN TRANSACTION;UPDATESET @OldEntity = Entity, Entity = @EntityWHERE BarcodeID = @BarcodeID;IF @OldEntity IS NULLBEGIN COMMIT TRANSACTION; ... /* report success */ENDELSEBEGIN ROLLBACK TRANSACTION; ... /* report failure */END;
Now I would like to make BarcodeID
sargable. Since I know that the column will only have unique values, I am considering to make the index unique as I think that can make my lookup more efficient. On the other hand, I am concerned that the generated values will have to be checked for uniqueness, which is redundant here since the uniqueness is already guaranteed.
Is it possible to somehow tell whether the benefits, if any, of a unique index on a computed column are going to outweigh the probable overhead of the (unnecessary in this case) uniqueness check? Or at least is it possible to determine that for a scenario like mine? Or am I just overthinking this?