Optimal Indexing for Performance – How to plan Index Ops. ?
An index or database index is a data structure which is used to quickly locate and access the data in a database table. Indexes are created on columns which will be the Search key that contains a copy of the primary key or candidate key of the table. These values are stored in sorted order so that the corresponding data can be accessed quickly (Note that the data may or may not be stored in sorted order). They are also Data Reference Pointers holding the address of the disk block where that particular key value can be found. Indexing in database systems is similar to what we see in books. There are complex design trade-offs involving lookup performance, index size, and index-update performance. Many index designs exhibit logarithmic (O(log(N))) lookup performance and in some applications it is possible to achieve flat (O(1)) performance. Indices can …
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