Databases
Intermediate
What is Database Index Types?
Different index structures (B-tree, Hash, GIN, GiST, BRIN) optimized for various query patterns and data types.
Database index types serve different purposes: B-tree indexes handle equality and range queries efficiently and are the default in most databases. Hash indexes are optimized for equality comparisons only. GIN (Generalized Inverted Index) indexes excel at full-text search and JSONB queries in PostgreSQL. GiST (Generalized Search Tree) indexes support geometric data and range types. BRIN (Block Range Index) indexes are compact indexes ideal for naturally ordered data like timestamps. Choosing the right index type can improve query performance by orders of magnitude.
