How do you do indexing on Crm 2011?

Question

We are using Crm 2011 as our persistence layer and we noticed terrible performance.

We looked and lo and behold there are indexing, but the indexing is a composite of all the columns in the entity (well almost). Which makes it practically useless for all intent and purposes.

So how do I speed this up? I could go to the database and manually add an index, but I want to go through proper channels if possible and for future maintainability sake. I have shifted through Bing and Google and Stackoverflow but I couldn't find any info on this basic functionality.

Please help.

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 29 '12 at 21:15

15

You can't solve this problem with Dynamics CRM. There is no way to configure indexing in Dynamics CRM, as it doesn't give you access to the underlying database - even not in a meta way.

If you have the need for indexes, you have to define them yourself in the database. This is supported by Microsoft (it is excluded from the unsupported modifications)

Modifications to the physical schema of the database, other than adding or updating indexes.

Keep in mind that due to the fact, that the application itself has no knowledge about the indexes, they are not part of the customizations and you have to deploy them yourself.

answered Feb 29 '12 at 21:15

ccellar

10,326
2
38
56

2

Let me sum this up, just add the damn index and it'll just work? The link mentions guidelines but I don't see them anywhere. – Alwyn Feb 29 '12 at 23:08
1

Thanks for the info. I was looking all over the place. This at least got me started down the right path. I still don't see what the guidelines are on the documents, so I'm just gonna assume that indexes can simply be added to the appropriate table without any other modification. Thanks! – Alwyn Mar 01 '12 at 00:27

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 24 '12 at 18:15

3

For the guidance on adding CRM 2011 indexes, following this link: Optimizing and Maintaining a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure

See the section labeled: Optimizing and Maintaining the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Database

answered Aug 24 '12 at 18:15

David Yates

1,935
2
22
38

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 17 '14 at 08:36

While this question is about CRM 2011 it is worth noting that CRM 2013 (both online and on-premises) includes support for adding indexes:

In CRM 2013, the Index Management job automatically adds indexes for Quick Find columns, up to 20 in total.

Simply add quick find columns for the relevant fields and wait for the Index Management job to run.

How do you do indexing on Crm 2011?

3 Answers3