Stored Procedures VS Indexed Views - Performance?

Question

Hey folks,
In the past, one of the factors I'd consider when choosing to use a Stored Procedure over a View was the fact that the Stored Procedure would get optimized by storing the query execution path (I'm a developer so I understand this at a higher level than a
DBA would).  But I've recently become aware of the fact that you can now Index your Views.  This has now raised new questions for me as to when I'd get better performance out of the Indexed View versus the Stored Procedure?
Take for example the following:
SELECT colA, colB, sum(colC), sum(colD), colE
FROM myTable
WHERE colFDate < '9/30/2011'
GROUP BY colA, colB, colE
The date will be different every time it's run, so if this were a view, I wouldn't include the WHERE in the view and instead have that as part of my select against the View.  If it were a stored procedure, the date would be a parameter.
If this were an Indexed View, should I expect to get better performance out of it then a stored procedure that's had an opportunity to cache the execution path?  Or would the proc be faster?  Or would
the difference be negligible?  I know we could say "just try both out" but there are too many factors that could falsely bias the results, so I'd like to hear more of the theory behind it and what the expected outcomes are instead.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Very cool.  Thanks Dan.  One question though.  You said "
If you are using SQL Server Enterprise Edition, you do not need to select from the view directly. "  I'm not sure what you mean here.  Where would I selecting from if not from the view?
 Thanks again!
What I mean is that if your query is semantically similar to the same query encapsulated in the view, the optimizer may be able to use the view index even though you specify the table in the query.  For example, each of the queries below will scan
the view index in Enterprise (or Developer) edition instead of the underlying table:
CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_myTable
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
SELECT colFDate, colA, colB, SUM(colC) AS colC, SUM(colD) AS colD, colE, COUNT_BIG(*) AS countbig
FROM dbo.myTable
GROUP BY colA, colB, colE, colFDate
GO
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX cdx_vw_myTable ON
dbo.vw_myTable(colA, colB, colE, colFDate);
GO
SELECT colA, colB, SUM(colC), SUM(colD), colE
FROM dbo.myTable
WHERE colFDate < '20110903'
GROUP BY colA, colB, colE;
GO
SELECT colA, colB, SUM(colC), SUM(colD), colE
FROM dbo.vw_myTable
WHERE colFDate < '20110903'
GROUP BY colA, colB, colE;
GO
SELECT colA, colB, SUM(colC), SUM(colD), colE
FROM dbo.vw_myTable WITH (NOEXPAND)
WHERE colFDate < '20110903'
GROUP BY colA, colB, colE;
GO
Dan Guzman, SQL Server MVP, http://www.dbdelta.com