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Difference between a clustered Index and a Heap

A table that has no clustered index is referred to as a heap. Whereas a clustered index has the data stored logically in the order of the index key, a heap has no ordering of rows or pages.
When a row is added to a table with a clustered index, that row has a defined page that it must go on to
, according to the value of the clustered index key. Using the index depicted in Figure 1 as an example, if a new row is added with a value of 4 for the clustered index key, that row must go onto the second leaf page. If that page is full, a new page gets allocated, joined into the index and some of the rows from the full page are moved to the new one. This is called a page split, it can be an expensive operation and it leads to fragmentation.
When a row is added to a table without a clustered index (a heap) there’s no specific place that the row has to go. A heap has no defined order. The row will be added wherever there’s a space large enough to put the row.

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