Physical ordering of pages after clustering

I don't have an OnLine up right now that I can test this on, so I thought I'd run it by the gurus: After an ALTER INDEX TO CLUSTER operation the datapages of a table are rearranged in index order. Are they therefore contiguous? Or are they still interleaved with index pages? If contigous, are the index pages also organised contiguously by index? I guess this question amounts to the following: Is ALTER INDEX equivalent to: CREATE newtab ...; INSERT INTO newtab SELECT ... ORDER BY ...; CREATE INDEX ...; . . . . . . . . . DROP TABLE oldtab; RENAME TABLE newtab TO oldtab; or equivalent to: CREATE newtab ...; CREATE INDEX ...; . . . . . . . . . INSERT INTO newtab SELECT ... ORDER BY ...; DROP TABLE oldtab; RENAME TABLE newtab TO oldtab; If, as I hope, the former behaviour is used, then am I right in thinking that, given a large table which was static in size, it would be possible to design your extents such that datapages were physically seperated from index pages? graeme -- Disclaimer: The author's opinions are his own, and not necessarily those of Pyramid Technology Ltd. or Pyramid Technology Inc. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -m------- Graeme Sargent Voice: +44 (0)252 373035 ---mmm----- Senior Database Consultant Fax : +44 (0)252 373135 -----mmmmm--- Pyramid Technology Ltd. Telex: Tell who??? -------mmmmmmm- Farnborough, Hants GU14 7PL Email: graeme@pyra.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the technology. The tricky bit is learning how to use it.