Where can I learn in-depth about indexes?

Hi everyone.

Our startup 21RISK has been using Mongodb for almost 2 years now, and we are beginning to see more and more issues related with indexes. I’m still struggling to really understand indexes.

Where did you learn in-depth about indexes in Mongodb? I’m thinking about books, online-courses, consultants etc? I don’t think the official documentation really digs deep - and mostly focuses on how to configure all of the different options.

Thanks for your valuable feedback in advance :nerd_face:

@Alex_Bjorlig I think to properly answer your question it would help to understand what it is exactly you’d like to know more about indexes.

For a deeper dive into how compound indexes can be optimized to satisfy a query, the blog posts “Optimizing MongoDB Compound Indexes” and “Optimizing MongoDB Compound Indexes - The “Equality - Sort - Range” (ESR) Rule” go into greater detail.

These videos from MongoDB University may also be helpful:

There are also community resources such as “MongoDB Index: Deep Dive, Understanding Indexes” that explore the data structure and storage optimizations of MongoDB indexes.

I would recommend starting with these resources, then if you have specific follow up questions we can address them as they come up.

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Hi @alexbevi - thanks for providing the list - exactly something like that I was looking for. Time to read and study :nerd_face: :books:

Hi @Alex_Bjorlig,

As @alexbevi mentioned it would be helpful to know what aspects of indexes you want to learn more about. Understanding index usage and query performance is a broad topic.

Some of the best resources not mentioned yet are the many technical presentations from past MongoDB events such as MongoDB.live. I shared some highlights from the sessions I watched last year in discussion around Thank you for two great days of sessions at MongoDB.live! - #5 by Stennie_X. You can find the rest of the MongoDB.live sessions and hundreds more videos on the MongoDB YouTube channel.

For more insights into indexes and query processing, I strongly recommend watching these talks from MongoDB.live 2020:

Schema design is also important for efficient queries and performance, and I recommend checking out the Data modelling, Queries, and Streaming session track from MongoDB.live 2020.

Several of the talks in that session track discuss schema design patterns, which are worth exploring further in:

Regards,
Stennie

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