From the course: Learning Relational Databases

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Build indexes

Build indexes

From the course: Learning Relational Databases

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Build indexes

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- [Voiceover] When it comes time for your database to retrieve the information that you've painstakingly stored, it'll often be helpful if the most commonly searched fields contain something called indexes. Indexes are a way for the database to keep track of what records have already been added to your table and to quickly retrieve a record or a group of records when they're requested. To get a feel for how indexes work, let's think about how a phone book is structured. Phone books typically provide a listing of people and their telephone number and are indexed by the last name of the individual person. If I were to give you a name to find, say Karyn Reese, it would be very easy to jump to the correct page in the R section and then find her telephone number. You can do this because the last names are ordered alphabetically, which makes it easy for you to quickly find the right name and its corresponding phone number. However, if I were to give you a telephone number, your task would…

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