Detached indexes

A detached index is an index with a separate fragmentation strategy that you set up explicitly with the CREATE INDEX statement.

The following sample SQL statements create a detached index:

CREATE TABLE tb1 (a int)
      FRAGMENT BY EXPRESSION
         (a <= 10) IN tabdbspc1,
         (a <= 20) IN tabdbspc2,
         (a <= 30) IN tabdbspc3;

CREATE INDEX idx1 ON tb1 (a)
      FRAGMENT BY EXPRESSION
         (a <= 10) IN idxdbspc1,
         (a <= 20) IN idxdbspc2,
         (a <= 30) IN idxdbspc3;

This example illustrates a common fragmentation strategy, to fragment indexes in the same way as the tables, but specify different dbspaces for the index fragments. This fragmentation strategy of putting the index fragments in different dbspaces from the table can improve the performance of operations such as backup, recovery, and so forth.

By default, all new indexes that the CREATE INDEX statement creates are detached and stored in separate tablespaces from the data unless the deprecated IN TABLE syntax is specified.

To create a detached index with partitions, include the partition name in your SQL statements, as shown in this example:

CREATE TABLE tb1 (a int)
      FRAGMENT BY EXPRESSION
            PARTITION part1 (a <= 10) IN dbs1,
            PARTITION part2 (a <= 20) IN dbs2,
            PARTITION part3 (a <= 30) IN dbs3;

    CREATE INDEX idx1 ON tb1 (a)
          FRAGMENT BY EXPRESSION
            PARTITION part1   (a <= 10) IN dbs1,
            PARTITION part2   (a <= 20) IN dbs2,
            PARTITION part3   (a <= 30) IN dbs3;

You can use the PARTITION BY EXPRESSION keywords instead of the FRAGMENT BY EXPRESSION keywords in the CREATE TABLE, CREATE INDEX, and ALTER FRAGMENT ON INDEX statements.

If you do not want to fragment the index, you can put the entire index in a separate dbspace.

You can fragment the index for any table by expression. However, you cannot explicitly create a round-robin fragmentation scheme for an index. Whenever you fragment a table using a round-robin fragmentation scheme, convert all indexes that accompany the table to detached indexes for the best performance.

Detached indexes have the following physical characteristics:

Each detached index fragment resides in a different tblspace from the corresponding table data. Therefore, the data and index pages cannot be interleaved within the tblspace.
Detached index fragments have their own extents and tblspace IDs. The tblspace ID is also known as the fragment ID and partition number. A detached index uses 8 bytes of disk space per index entry for the fragment ID and row pointer combination. For more information on how to estimate space for an index, see Estimating index pages.

Forest of trees indexes are detached indexes. They cannot be attached indexes.

The database server stores the location of each table and index fragment, along with other related information, in the sysfragments system catalog table. You can view the sysfragments system catalog table to access information about fragmented tables and indexes, including the following :

The value in the partn column is the partition number or fragment id of the table or index fragment. The partition number for a detached index is different from the partition number of the corresponding table fragment.
The value in the strategy column is the distribution scheme used in the fragmentation strategy.

For a complete description of column values that the sysfragments system catalog table contains, see the Informix® Guide to SQL: Reference. For information about how to use sysfragments to monitor your fragments, see Monitoring fragment use.