title: Define what indexing data structure/algorithm SQL Server uses?
body: <p>Is there a way to tell SQL Server what data structure/algorithm to use for it's indexing?</p>
  
  <p>In other words, can you tell it to use hashes, b-trees or a different base value for a b-tree to make it less memory intensive?</p>
  
  <p>My problem, is that I have a 12TB database that wants to use 1TB of RAM for indexing, but the box only has 192GB of RAM in it. SQL Server does some memory management and the database eventually thrashes out, disk I/O queue gets way to high, etc. probably due to swapping. I'd like to use indexing, but I believe the default btree indexing is too memory heavy. Based on responses, I might also post a followup question. Thank you.</p>