Partition elimination is now done in this seek operation. In addition, the Query Optimizer is extended so that a seek or scan operation with one condition can be done on PartitionID (as the logical leading column) and possibly other index key columns, and then a second-level seek, with a different condition, can be done on one or more additional columns, for each distinct value that meets the qualification for the first-level seek operation. That is, this operation, called a skip scan, allows the Query Optimizer to perform a seek or scan operation based on one condition to determine the partitions to be accessed and a second-level index seek operation within that operator to return rows from these partitions that meet a different condition.