An interesting thought: When will SQL Server offer automated index maintenance? Creating indexes on the fly, dropping them on a 'not used recently' or 'not used frequently' base, would that ever become a task for SQL Server and not for the DBA?

Years ago, optimizing query plans was done by hand and certain DBAs excel in this task. However, by today's standards one should have very good arguments to place even a hint on a query. I guess the first implementation of automatic indexing would be far from optimal. But the optimizer has come a long way from being hardly useful to being nearly unbeatable.

Will index maintenance still be needed within ten years? Wil SQL 2025 require a DBA to create the appropriate indexes on its tables? Will it support 'indexing hints' that allow us to tell the optimizer which columns should at least be indexed?