SQL Server Index Drops - Considerations I've been doing some index usage reviews (using DMV seek, scan and lookup stats) and have identified a number of 'unused' indexes in our biggest and busiest DB.  I am interested in the opinions of this forum on what checks or confirmations other than reads should be evaluated before performing the index DROPs.  One that comes immediately to mind is whether the index is being used to enforce a necessary unique constraint.  What other factors are important to consider?
If there was a clever person who decided to use index hints in their application's queries, dropping said index will cause the query to fail outright if/when it runs.
Something like a quarter or year-end report might not be showing any index usage due to its infrequency of execution depending on how often the system is restarted.