SQL Indexes

An index is an in-memory structure that ensures that queries we run on a database are performant, that is to say, they run quickly.

If you can remember back to the data structures course, most database indexes are just binary trees or B-trees! The binary tree can be stored in RAM as well as on disk, and it makes it easy to look up the location of an entire row.

PRIMARY KEY columns are indexed by default, ensuring you can look up a row by its id very quickly. However, if you have other columns that you want to be able to do quick lookups on, you'll need to index them.

CREATE INDEX index_name ON table_name (column_name);