2011-10-12Anatomy of an SQL Index

“An index makes the query fast” is the most basic explanation of an index I have ever heard of. Although it describes the most important aspect of an index very well, it is—unfortunately—not sufficient for this book. This chapter describes the index structure in a less superficial way, but doesn’t dive too deep into details. It provides just enough insight to understand the SQL performance aspects discussed throughout the book.

An index is a distinct structure in the database. It requires its own disk space and holds a copy of the indexed table data. That means that an index is pure redundancy. Creating an index does not change the table data; it just creates a new data structure that refers to the table. A database index is, after all, very much like the index at the end of a book: it occupies its own space; it is highly redundant; and it refers to the actual information, which is stored at a different place.

Searching in a database indexes is like searching in a printed telephone directory. The key concept is that all entries are lined-up in a well-defined order. Finding data in an ordered data set is fast and easy because the sort-order determines each entries position.

A database index is, however, more complex than a printed directory because it undergoes permanent change. Updating a printed directory for every change is impossible. Just alone for the reason that there is no space between existing entries to add new ones. A printed directory bypasses this problem, because it covers the accumulated updates with the next print only. An SQL database cannot wait for that. It must process insert, delete and update statements online, keeping the index order without moving large amounts of data.

The database combines two data structures to meet the challenge: a doubly linked list and a search tree. These two structures explain most of the database’s performance behaviour.