Indexing in Practice

Indexing strategies in database systems differ both in terms of the data structures employed -- e.g. B-trees, R-trees, grid files, bitmap indices, hash indices etc. -- and in how exactly those data structures are used. The goal of this thesis is to perform a survey of multiple major database systems (DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, SQLite) and determine which data structures they use in which exact way. Further, those approaches to indexing should be compared in terms of specific workloads for which a given system is better suited than its competitors.