Bitmap Indexes

As I’ve discussed previously, a Bitmap index can be considered over a B-tree index (where concurrent DML is not an issue) even if there are potentially tens of millions of distinct values, in a table that has say hundreds of millions of rows.   However, if a column is unique or “approaches” uniqueness, then one [...]

As discussed in my previous post, it’s a silly myth to suggest a bitmap index should only be used for so-called “low cardinality” columns else the resultant index would be “huge”. I thought it might be worth a quick refresh to see a simple little demonstration why such claims are a nonsense.  There is in fact no limit to [...]

I just couldn’t resist.   One of the great myths in Oracle is that bitmap indexes are only suitable and should only be used with columns that have so-called low cardinality (few distinct) values. A classic example of this myth being propagated is in this latest Burleson news item, “Oracle bitmap index maximum distinct values“, from Feb 16 [...]