Indexes are a very important part of databases and are used frequently to speed up access to particular data item or items. So before working with indexes, it is important to understand how indexes work behind the scene and what is the data structure that is used to store these indexes, because unless you understand the inner working of an index, you will never be able to fully harness its power.

Yesterday was a good vacation day at my sister's house. As usual with me, I don't seem able to have a completely computer-free day. I did some work tasks, and then turned my attention to my sister's network problems. She has a Mac, which is wired, and several Windows laptops. The windows laptops weren't able to connect to the Verizon-supplied DSL modem and router in-one. It was set up for WEP (64-bit). I tried numerous times to get the windows laptops working and found finally that that using 128-bit encryption WEP solved the problem. Except for one computer. It was an old Dell laptop with Windows. She wants this to be her daughter's (my 11 year-old niece) computer. This laptop was running extremely slow and could not connect to the Verizon router, even when not encrypted. This particular laptop also uses a PCI Linksys wireless card, so perhaps it's out of date enough to not work with the Verizon router.

My sister asked me if I could …