Index selection in relational databases

Abstract

When planning a database, the problem of index selection is of particular interest. In this paper, we examine a transaction model which includes queries, updates, insertions and deletions, and we define a function that calculates the transactions total cost when an index set is used. Our aim was to minimize the function cost in order to identify the optimal set. The algorithms proposed in previous studies require an exponential time in the number of file attributes in order to solve the problem. We propose a heuristic algorithm based on some properties of the cost function and this algorithm produces an almost optimal set in polinomial time.