I know I need to have a primary key set, and to set anything that should be unique as a unique key, but what is an INDEX and how do I use them?
What are the benefits? Pros & Cons? I notice I can either use them or not, when should I?
Advantages of MySQL Indexes 1- Indexes make search queries much faster. 2- Indexes like primary key index and unique index help to avoid duplicate row data. 3- Full-text indexes in MySQL, users have the opportunity to optimize searching against even large amounts of text located in any field indexed as such.
An index gives a quick measure of the state of a market. Index funds are a low-cost way to invest, provide better returns than most fund managers, and help investors to achieve their goals more consistently.
Using an index in SQL has many advantages like optimized search performance, faster sorting and grouping of records, and easier maintenance of unique columns.
Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time a database table is accessed. Indexes can be created using one or more columns of a database table, providing the basis for both rapid random lookups and efficient access of ordered records.
Short answer:
Indexes speed up SELECT
's and slow down INSERT
's.
Usually it's better to have indexes, because they speed up select
more than they slow down insert
.
On an UPDATE
the index can speed things way up if an indexed field is used in the WHERE
clause and slow things down if you update
one of the indexed fields.
How do you know when to use an index
Add EXPLAIN
in front of your SELECT
statement.
Like so:
EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM table1
WHERE unindexfield1 > unindexedfield2
ORDER BY unindexedfield3
Will show you how much work MySQL will have to do on each of the unindexed fields.
Using that info you can decide if it is worthwhile to add indexes or not.
Explain can also tell you if it is better to drop and index
EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM table1
WHERE indexedfield1 > indexedfield2
ORDER BY indexedfield3
If very little rows are selected, or MySQL decided to ignore the index (it does that from time to time) then you might as well drop the index, because it is slowing down your insert
s but not speeding up your select
's.
Then again it might also be that your select statement is not clever enough.
(Sorry for the complexity in the answer, I was trying to keep it simple, but failed).
Link:
MySQL indexes - what are the best practices?
Pros:
Faster lookup for results. This is all about reducing the # of Disk IO's. Instead of scanning the entire table for the results, you can reduce the number of disk IO's(page fetches) by using index structures such as B-Trees or Hash Indexes to get to your data faster.
Cons:
Slower writes(potentially). Not only do you have to write your data to your tables, but you also have to write to your indexes. This may cause the system to restructure the index structure(Hash Index, B-Tree etc), which can be very computationally expensive.
Takes up more disk space, naturally. You are storing more data.
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