Indeksimine

Indeksimine, or indexing, is the process of creating data structures that enable faster retrieval of information or measurement of data changes. It is used in various domains, including databases, search systems, digital archives, and financial markets. An index provides a mapping from search keys to the records that contain them, allowing queries to run without scanning every item.

In database systems, indexes are built on one or more columns. Common structures include B-tree and bitmap indexes, as well as clustered and non-clustered variants. Text indexes support full-text search, while spatial or multidimensional indexes support location-based queries. Indexes speed up equality and range queries but require additional storage and can slow down data updates due to maintenance work.

In information retrieval, inverted indexes map terms to the documents that contain them, often with term frequency and positional data. This enables efficient full-text search and ranking. Spatial indexing uses structures such as R-trees to manage multi-dimensional data. In financial markets, index construction aggregates prices or returns to form market indicators or benchmarks; transparent methodology and regular recalibration are important in this context.

Creation and maintenance involve selecting the right indexing strategy based on query patterns, building the index, and maintaining it as data changes. This includes tasks like reindexing or reorganization to reduce fragmentation. Practical considerations include the balance between faster reads and slower writes, storage overhead, and the expected workload. Effective indexing relies on evaluating query needs, data characteristics, and maintenance costs to determine which fields or attributes should be indexed.