This chapter will explore one of the most important properties of any database: indexing. Similar to book indexes, database indexes allow for quicker data retrieval. In the RDBMS world, indexes are widely used (and sometimes abused) to speed up data access. In MongoDB, indexes play an integral part in schema and query design. MongoDB supports a wide array of indexes that you will learn about in this chapter, including single field, compound, multi-key, geospatial, hashed, partial, and many more. In addition to reviewing the different types of indexes, we will show you how to build and manage indexes for single-server deployments, as well as complex sharded environments.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Index internals
• Types of indexes
• Building and managing indexes
• Efficient usage of indexes