Free ebookIndexing 101: How Databases Find Data Fast

Course Description

Indexing 101: How Databases Find Data Fast is a practical ebook course for anyone who wants to speed up queries and understand why some database searches feel instant while others crawl. In the Information Technology category with a focus on Database performance, it explains how database indexing works in everyday terms while staying grounded in real engineering decisions you can apply at work.

You will learn how data access paths influence query performance and why indexes matter for common filters, joins, and sorting. By building a clear mental model of B-tree index fundamentals, you will understand how lookups work, how the database navigates pages, and why certain query shapes are efficient. The course then connects selectivity and cardinality to real outcomes, helping you predict when an index helps and when it adds little value.

As you progress, you will see how composite indexes depend on column order and how that choice maps to real queries. You will also learn how covering indexes and included columns can reduce extra lookups and improve response times, especially for read heavy workloads. Just as important, the ebook explains how indexes affect writes, storage, and concurrency, so you can balance fast reads with healthy insert and update performance.

The course helps you recognize over-indexing, redundant index patterns, and common performance pitfalls that defeat indexes, such as mismatched predicates, functions on indexed columns, and low selectivity filters. You will practice choosing the right indexes from real query workloads, building an indexing strategy that supports both speed and maintainability across SQL databases and modern relational systems.

If you are ready to make smarter indexing decisions, reduce latency, and improve database performance with confidence, start Indexing 101: How Databases Find Data Fast today.