Oracle Database SQL Question: What business scenarios might call for an index-organized table? Please be as detailed as possible and type out in text, as handwriting is often difficult to read. Thank you for your time in advance :]
Oracle
An index-organized table is a table stored in a variation of a B-tree index structure. In contrast, a heap-organized table inserts rows where they fit.
In an index-organized table, rows are stored in an index defined on the primary key for the table. Each index entry in the B-tree also stores the non-key column values. Thus, the index is the data, and the data is the index. Applications manipulate index-organized tables just like heap-organized tables, using SQL statements.
For an analogy of an index-organized table, suppose a human resources manager has a book case of cardboard boxes. Each box is labeled with a number 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on but the boxes do not sit on the shelves in sequential order. Instead, each box contains a pointer to the shelf location of the next box in the sequence.
Folders containing employee records are stored in each box. The folders are sorted by employee ID. Employee King has ID 100, which is the lowest ID, so his folder is at the bottom of box 1. The folder for employee 101 is on top of 100, 102 is on top of 101, and so on until box 1 is full. The next folder in the sequence is at the bottom of box 2.
In this analogy, ordering folders by employee ID makes it possible to search efficiently for folders without having to maintain a separate index. Suppose a user requests the records for employees 107, 120, and 122. Instead of searching an index in one step and retrieving the folders in a separate step, the manager can search the folders in sequential order and retrieve each folder as found.
Index-organized tables provide faster access to table rows by primary key or a valid prefix of the key. The presence of non-key columns of a row in the leaf block avoids an additional data block I/O. For example, the salary of employee 100 is stored in the index row itself. Also, because rows are stored in primary key order, range access by the primary key or prefix involves minimal block I/Os. Another benefit is the avoidance of the space overhead of a separate primary key index.
Index-organized tables are useful when related pieces of data must be stored together or data must be physically stored in a specific order. A typical use of this type of table is for information retrieval, spatial data, and OLAP applications.
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