• Thank you so much for this series.

    I have a question about when an index is finished building. For this question, let's say we're talking about a table with no indexes that has 20 million rows at 300KB per row and there is no activity involving the table other than the index build. This is an actual use case, so please let me know if I need to add any details.

    When an index is created on that table (clustered or non-clustered), the command returns to the client very quickly to say "Completed successfully". It can't possibly have built the index already, right? So, if that assertion is correct, how can I tell if a particular index has been completely built? Is there a DMV for that? Something in profiler?

    I've tried searching for this, but I primarily get discussions on when to rebuild indexes. While that is an important topic, it's not what I'm looking for.

    Phil Helmer
    Database Engineer