Databases
Intermediate
What is B-Tree Index?
The default index type in most databases that organizes data in a balanced tree structure for efficient searching, sorting, and range queries.
B-tree (balanced tree) indexes maintain sorted data in a tree structure where each node can have multiple children. They support equality (=), range (<, >, BETWEEN), ORDER BY, and prefix LIKE queries efficiently.
B-tree indexes are the default in PostgreSQL, MySQL, and most databases. They work well for most use cases but are not optimal for full-text search (use GIN), array/JSON queries (use GIN), or geospatial queries (use GiST). Over-indexing hurts write performance.