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3
Effective Data Warehouse Indexing
This chapter is divided into three distinct parts. The first part examines the
basics of indexing, including different types of available indexes. The sec-
ond part of this chapter attempts to prove the usefulness, or otherwise, of
bitmap indexes, bitmap join indexes, star queries, and star transformations.
Lastly, this chapter briefly examines the use of index organized tables
(IOTs) and clusters in data warehouses.
3.1 The Basics of Indexing
An index in a database is essentially a copy of a small physical chunk of a
table. That index is then used to access the table, because reading the index
reads a small portion ...