How to create nonclustered index with online if available

Question

I'm adding a new index to a SQL Azure database as recommended by the query insights blade in the Azure portal, which uses the ONLINE=ON flag. The SQL looks something like this:

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_MyIndex] ON 
       [Customers].[Activities] ([CustomerId]) 
   INCLUDE ([AccessBitmask], [ActivityCode], [DetailsJson], 
       [OrderId], [OperationGuid], [PropertiesJson], [TimeStamp]) 
   WITH (ONLINE = ON)"

However, we also need to add this same index to our local development databases, which are just localdb instances that don't support the ONLINE=ON option, resulting in the following error.

Online index operations can only be performed in Enterprise edition of SQL Server.

My question is - is there a way to write this SQL index creation statement that will use ONLINE=ON if available , but still succeed on databases that don't support it?

Answer 1

You can use something like this:

DECLARE @Edition NVARCHAR(128);
DECLARE @SQL NVARCHAR(MAX);

SET @Edition = (SELECT SERVERPROPERTY ('Edition'));

SET @SQL = N'
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_MyIndex] ON 
       [Customers].[Activities] ([CustomerId]) 
   INCLUDE ([AccessBitmask], [ActivityCode], [DetailsJson], 
       [OrderId], [OperationGuid], [PropertiesJson], [TimeStamp]) 
'

IF @Edition LIKE 'Enterprise Edition%' OR @Edition LIKE 'SQL Azure%' BEGIN
    SET  @SQL = @SQL + N' WITH (ONLINE = ON)';
END; 

EXEC sp_executesql @SQL;