indexfreie

Indexfreie, literally “index-free” in German, is a term used in information technology to describe data retrieval approaches that operate without traditional prebuilt indexes. In index-free designs, queries are resolved by scanning stored data and computing results on the fly, rather than consulting a separate, precomputed index or inverted index. The concept is often discussed in contrast to systems that rely on fixed indexes to speed up lookups.

Core techniques associated with index-free design include sequential data scans, in-memory processing where data structures reside in RAM without external indexing, and on-demand or just-in-time methods that delay index construction until necessary. Related concepts such as adaptive indexing are sometimes mentioned in discussions, though adaptive indexing can introduce evolving access paths rather than a complete absence of indexing.

Use cases for index-free approaches tend to arise when datasets are small to moderate in size, data is highly volatile with frequent schema changes, or write throughput is prioritized over read performance. In these scenarios, the overhead of maintaining indexes can be undesirable, and a simpler, index-free workflow may be advantageous.

Limitations of index-free designs include slower query performance for complex predicates, larger data scans, and reduced scalability as data volumes grow. For many applications, traditional indexing remains the preferred solution, delivering faster lookups and more efficient queries at the cost of additional maintenance and insert/update overhead.

See also: index, full scan, adaptive indexing, NoSQL databases.