Company
Date Published
Author
Will McMullen
Word count
1931
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Slow database queries can significantly impact application performance, leading to wasted resources and frustrated users. Indexing is a simple yet powerful solution that can dramatically speed up query times by allowing databases to skip full table scans and instead check indexes for matches. However, over-indexing or indexing large, infrequently filtered fields can degrade performance and waste resources. To identify index-worthy queries in your application, start with performance monitoring tools like Sentry that provide an overview of your app's slowest database operations. Then, use your database's built-in diagnostic tools to diagnose problematic queries further. Once you've identified a query that could benefit from indexing, apply and test the index using EXPLAIN commands in SQL or .explain() in NoSQL databases like MongoDB. By focusing on high-impact queries and testing your fixes, you can quickly improve database performance.