5th Week in 363 Database Management

If indexes are supposed to speed up performance of query,  what does the author mean by a slow index? 


The author writes that using indexes involves more than just performing a tree traversal. While some people assume that index lookups require only tree traversal, additional operations, such as leaf node chaining are also used. When many entries match, the database must read the next leaf node to check for additional matches. This leads to extra performance costs and making it slower.

Another thing that contributes to "slow index" is the need to fetch the corresponding table data. Since data might be scattered across many table blocks. This adds extra work and results to the overall delay in performance. The author writes that the use indexes requires not just a tree traversal, but also involves leaf node chaining and fetching table information, all of which slow down performance.

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