What is the general space-time tradeoff when using indexing in a database?

What is the general space-time tradeoff when using indexing in a database?

• A. Indexing speeds reads at the cost of extra storage and slower writes.
• B. Indexing speeds writes but increases storage.
• C. Indexing has no effect on performance.
• D. Indexing reduces storage.

Answer: (A)

Indexing creates separate data structures to speed up lookups. This speeds reads because the database can locate matching rows quickly without scanning the entire table. But it requires extra storage to hold the index, and every write operation must also update the index to stay in sync, which adds overhead and can slow down inserts, updates, and deletes. So the general space-time tradeoff is faster reads at the cost of more storage and slower writes. If your workload is read-heavy, indexing pays off; if writes are frequent, too many indexes can degrade performance.

Indexing creates separate data structures to speed up lookups. This speeds reads because the database can locate matching rows quickly without scanning the entire table. But it requires extra storage to hold the index, and every write operation must also update the index to stay in sync, which adds overhead and can slow down inserts, updates, and deletes. So the general space-time tradeoff is faster reads at the cost of more storage and slower writes. If your workload is read-heavy, indexing pays off; if writes are frequent, too many indexes can degrade performance.