Week 21 (5/28/2025 - 6/3/2025)

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    Hi everyone, welcome to my 21st blog! This is the Week 5 post for CST 363 Introduction to Database Systems.
  • The website "Use the Index Luke" has a page on "slow indexes". https://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/anatomy/slow-indexes. If indexes are supposed to speed up performance of query, what does the author mean by a slow index?
    • The author, Markus Winand, states that there are three steps to an index lookup. They are:
      • The tree traversal
      • Following the leaf node chain
      • Fetching the table data
    • According to Mr. Winand, the only step with an upper bound for the number of accessed blocks is the index depth (tree traversal step). This means the two steps that follow have the potential to cause a slow index lookup. The author also mentions how Oracle database has three distinct operations to describe a basic index lookup:
      • index unique scan
      • index range scan
      • table access by index rowid
    • The author concludes that the index range scan can still be a slow query despite the utilization of indexes if there is an additional table access for each row.

    That is all for this week, see you in my Week 21 post!

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