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What is difference between primary index, secondary index, unique index and normal index?

Submitted by: @import:stackexchange-dba··
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Problem

I work on Oracle systems where I two type of indices exists in any table:

  • Unique index (Based on any search key which is unique key).



  • Normal index (Index made on any search key which is not candidate or primary key).



But now I came to know about two new type of indices from a university documentation:

  • Primary index



  • Secondary index



How are primary and secondary indices different from each other? Are they the same as unique and normal index respectively in Oracle?

I also want to know about below two indices:

  • Dense index



  • Sparse index



Can we consider dense and sparse indices as type of primary and secondary indices?

Solution

Primary index

A primary index is an index on a set of fields that includes
the unique primary key for the field and is guaranteed not to contain duplicates.
Also Called a Clustered index.
eg. Employee ID can be Example of it.

Secondary index

A Secondary index is an index that is not a primary index and may have duplicates.
eg. Employee name can be example of it. Because Employee name can have similar values.

Dense Index

Index record appears for every search­ key value in the file.
Dense indexes point directly to individual records.

Sparse index

contains index records for only some search ­key values.
Applicable when records are sequentially ordered on search ­key.
Just as with book indexes, sparse database indexes don’t point to individual records, but to ‘pages'

Context

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#50248, answer score: 5

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