A question on SARGability
correct
not necessarily - it depends on whether a suitable index exists and whether the CBO decides to use it. For example if the table is small or the the statistics lead the optimizer to believe that the filter will be true for a large percentage of the results, it may consider the cost of a FTS to be lower
this is not guaranteed - it is even possible that the 2nd query will perform worse - but your reasoning is fundamentally sound. For example, in an edge case when a FTS would actually be faster, the CBO may choose an index scan instead based on its best guess of the cost - which is always only an estimate of course


A bit of googling turned up this SO question and this interesting looking article on SARGability