Databases are a heavily used data structure in computer that range from very simple tables of information like an excel spreadsheet to very intricate collect of multiple databases that are linked together. The index is very much like looking at the table of contents or back index of a book to find a particular topic. You don’t want to read through the entire book. So this index is very important. There is also a trade off in having too many indexes in a database. The following article talks about this database indexing tradeoff.
We typically think of a database as a store of digital data, but a database can also be a store of written data as well. Looking at it this way, a library can be considered to be a database. Despite their differences, a library of books and a database have much in common. Neither the librarian nor the database administrator simply haphazardly stores the data in the next available slot. (more…)
