Collecting Statistics on Base Table Columns Instead of Single-Table Join Index Columns
The Optimizer substitutes base table statistics for single-table join index statistics when no demographics have been collected for its single-table indexes. Because of the way single-table join index columns are built, it is generally best not to collect statistics directly on the index columns and instead to collect them on the corresponding columns of the base table. This optimizes both system performance and disk storage by eliminating the need to collect the same data redundantly.
You might need to collect statistics on single-table join index columns instead of their underlying base table columns if you decide not to collect the statistics for the relevant base table columns for some reason. In this case, you should collect statistics directly on the corresponding single-table join index columns.
Note that the derived statistics framework can use bidirectional inheritance of statistics between base tables and their underlying non-sparse single‑table join indexes, so the importance of collecting statistics on base table columns rather than non-sparse single‑table join index columns is no longer as important as it once was (see SQL Request and Transaction Processing for details).