And when we need to find things —

like specific topics, phrases, and even individual words —

searching for them can be a time-consuming process.

Page by page we read each word, hoping to find what we're looking for.

This could go on for a long time.

But for many books, there's a tool to make the process more efficient:

the Index!

Creating an index takes a lot of work up front: words must be listed alphabetically, with a reference to their page location.

But now we can find the topic we're looking for —

and bingo, jump to the pages that the index references!

We've solved the search problem for books, but what about computers and big data?

Let's investigate what this looks like!

Chapter 2

Computers & Databases

There's a lot of data in the world

And databases store a lot of text.

If we need to find something, the solution is slow.

Row by row, the computer scans the text for the terms we're looking for.

This could go on for a long time.

But there's a tool to make this process more efficient.

You guessed it —

the Index!

Row by row, the text in the database is analyzed and inserted into the index.

Like in the back of a book, the index is organized alphabetically for fast lookup.

For every term that's inserted into the index,a reference to the original row in the database is attached for later use.
(We'll explain why later!)

Now, when the computer searches for a term, it skips the database and heads straight to the exact match that's present in the index!

The result? Getting the exact answer you need, fast!

Let’s dig deeper and use an interactive example with real data!

Chapter 3

Create an Index

Fantastic! Now we have an index. On to the search!