An index is a physical mechanism for storing and accessing table rows. Like indexes in books, indexes on tables in a relational database function speed up information retrieval.
Vantage uses indexes to do the following:
- Distribute data rows.
- Locate data rows.
- Improve performance.
Indexed access is usually more efficient than searching all rows of a table.
Vantage supports the following types of indexes:
- Primary
- Partitioned Primary
- Secondary
- Join
- Hash
- Special indexes for referential integrity