indeksdatabase

An indeksdatabase, also known as an index database or simply an index, is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database. It works by creating a lookup table that the database search engine can use to quickly locate rows in a table, instead of having to scan every row of the table to find the requested information. The index contains a copy of one or more columns of a table, organized in a specific order, allowing for much faster searches. When a query is made on a column that is indexed, the database can use the index to find the relevant rows without examining every single record. This is analogous to how a book's index helps a reader quickly find specific topics without reading the entire book. Common types of indexes include B-trees, hash indexes, and full-text indexes, each suited for different types of data and query patterns. While indexes significantly speed up read operations, they do incur some overhead. Writing data to a table that has indexes may take slightly longer because the indexes also need to be updated. Furthermore, indexes consume additional storage space. Therefore, careful consideration is given to which columns should be indexed to balance performance gains against storage and write costs.