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INDEXES
To speed up SQL statement execution on a table
Without an index, Oracle will do a full table search
Indexes are most useful on larger tables, on columns that are
likely to appear in where clauses as simple equality

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 DICTIONARY TABLES

ALL_INDEXES
DBA_INDEXES
USER_INDEXES
ALL_IND_COLUMNS
DBA_IND_COLUMNS
USER_IND_COLUMNS

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 TYPES

UNIQUE INDEX
NON-UNIQUE INDEX
COMPOSITE INDEX
FUNCTIONBASED INDEX
BTREE INDEX
BITMAP INDEX

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 UNIQUE INDEX

Unique indexes guarantee that no two rows of a table have

duplicate values in the columns that define the index.

automatically created when primary key or unique constraint

is created.

Ex:
create unique index idx_empno on emp(empno);

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 NON-UNIQUE INDEX

Non-Unique indexes do not impose the above (UNIQUE INDEX)

restriction on the column values.

Ex:
create index idx_job on emp(job);

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 COMPOSITE INDEX

A composite index also called a concatenated index is an

index created on multiple columns of a table.
Columns in a composite index can appear in any order and
need not be adjacent columns of the table.
Ex:
create index idx_comp on emp(ename,job);

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 FUNCTION BASED INDEX

A function-based index is created when using functions or

expressions that involve one or more columns in the table that
is being indexed.
A function-based index pre-computes the value of the function
or expression and stores it in the index.

Ex:
create index idx_ename on emp(upper(ename));

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 BTREE INDEX

The default type of index used in an oracle database is the

btree index.
This can be used for highest cardinality ( =1) columns: that is
columns in which the number of distinct values is equal to the
number of the rows in the table.

Ex:
create index idx_empno on emp(empno);

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 BITMAP INDEX

When a table has millions of rows and the key columns have
low cardinality.
When queries often use a combination of multiple WHERE
conditions involving the OR operator
When there is read-only or low update activity on the key
columns
Ex:
create bitmap index idx_job on emp(job);

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 Questions & Answers

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