The environments typically have large amounts of data and ad hoc queries, but a low level of concurrent DML transactions.For such applications, bitmap indexing provides:
- Reduced response time for large classes of ad hoc queries.
- Reduced storage requirements compared to other indexing techniques.
- Dramatic performance gains even on hardware with a relatively small number of CPUs or a small amount of memory.
- Efficient maintenance during parallel DML and loads.
Where exactly user needs to use bitmap indexes?
In this section i would like to give you where exactly user needs to use the Bitmap indexes.Bitmap indexes will be used when there are multiple distinct values. I will recommend you to use bitmap index when the distinct values are between 1 to 100.Kindly make sure that following important points before using Bitmap indexes.
Why doesn't Oracle support bitmap primary key indexes?
If you define this culumn as a primary key, you will create a B-tree index and not a bitmap index because Oracle does not support bitmap primary key indexes. To analyze the behavior of these indexes, we will perform the fullowing steps: 1. On TEST_NORMAL:
How to create Bitmap indexes on partitioned tables?
User can create bitmap indexes on partitioned tables but make sure that those indexes are local indexes.Lets say Student table is partitioned table and user needs to create index on Grade column.Then user needs to use local keyword to create index.
What is the difference between bitmap and B-tree indexes in DSS?
Most important, bitmap indexes in DSS systems support ad hoc queries, whereas B-tree indexes do not. More specifically, if you have a table with 50 columns and users frequently query on 10 of themeither the combination of all 10 columns or sometimes a single culumncreating a B-tree index will be very difficult.
Where to Use Bitmap Index ?
What are the advantages of using a bitmap index?
When are bitmap indexes useful?
Can you create composite bitmap indexes?
Can you create bitmap indexes on partitioned tables?

In which type of scenarios we can use bitmap indexes?
Bitmap indexes store the bitmaps in a compressed way. If the number of distinct key values is small, bitmap indexes compress better and the space saving benefit compared to a B-tree index becomes even better. Bitmap indexes are most effective for queries that contain multiple conditions in the WHERE clause.
What is the difference between index and bitmap index?
An index provides pointers to the rows in a table that contain a given key value. A regular index stores a list of rowids for each key corresponding to the rows with that key value. In a bitmap index, a bitmap for each key value replaces a list of rowids.
What do you mean by bitmap index?
A bitmap index is a special kind of database index that uses bitmaps. Bitmap indexes have traditionally been considered to work well for low-cardinality columns, which have a modest number of distinct values, either absolutely, or relative to the number of records that contain the data.
What is a disadvantage of using a bitmap index?
Disadvantages of Bitmap Indices They are not suitable for small tables. In small tables, DBMS will force to use full table scan instead of using bitmap index. When there is multiple insert/update/delete on the table from different users, it may cause deadlock on the tables.
What are two characteristics of an efficient bitmap index?
An efficient bitmap index has two characteristics: The database can quickly determine the block containing a table row from the index row number (steps 3 and 4). Ex: The index row number is the hash key for a hash table. The block is determined by applying the hash function to the row number.
How is bitmap index implemented?
Multi Attribute IntersectionAccess the country index, and read the bitmap for value ”GB”.Access the sector index, and read the bitmap for value ”Energies”.Apply a bitwise logical AND to get a new bitmap.Access the data stored by record id with the retrieved indices.
What is the difference between B-tree and bitmap index?
B-Tree indexes are the type that are used by OLTP systems and which are mainly implemented by default. Bitmap, on the other hand, comes as a highly compressed index format which, in most cases, is employed in data warehouses.
Which of the following statements about bitmap indexes are valid?
All of the given statements are valid for bitmap indexes. Bitmap sorting is a technique for classifying datasets based on a specific key. In this method, bitmap images are typically used.
How many bitmap indices are there for gender?
two separateThe structure of the bitmap index looks like the following picture: It has two separate bitmaps, one for each gender.
Which of the following situations is best suited for indexing?
Columns with one or more of the following characteristics are good candidates for indexing: Values are unique in the column, or there are few duplicates.
What type of key is commonly used to query in the bitmap index?
Bitmap indices are a specialized type of index designed for easy querying on multiple keys, although each bitmap index is built on single key. For bitmap indices to be used, records in a relation must be numbered sequentially, starting from, say , 0 , Given a number n ,it must be easy to retrieve the record number n.
What are the types of indexes in Oracle?
Index Characteristics.B-Tree Indexes.Bitmap Indexes.Function-Based Indexes.Application Domain Indexes.Index Storage.
What is difference between B-tree index and binary index?
B-Tree : B-Tree is known as a self-balancing tree as its nodes are sorted in the inorder traversal. Unlike the binary trees, in B-tree, a node can have more than two children. B-tree has a height of logM N (Where 'M' is the order of tree and N is the number of nodes).
What is the difference between B-tree index and bitmap index in Oracle?
1: Syntax differences: The bitmap index includes the "bitmap" keyword. The btree index does not say "bitmap". 2: Cardinality differences: The bitmap index is generally for columns with lots of duplicate values (low cardinality), while b-tree indexes are best for high cardinality columns.
What are the types of index?
Expression-based indexes efficiently evaluate queries with the indexed expression.Unique and non-unique indexes. ... Clustered and non-clustered indexes. ... Partitioned and nonpartitioned indexes. ... Bidirectional indexes. ... Expression-based indexes.
What are the different types of indexes in SQL?
There are two types of indexing in SQL.Clustered index.Non-clustered index.
sql - How does a bitmap index work? - Stack Overflow
A reverse key index (in Oracle) is just a regular (B-tree) index with the keys reversed (1234 becomes 4321). This may prevent unbalanced indexes if you add incrementing keys.
Bitmap Index vs. B-tree Index: Which and When? - Oracle
Note that the TEST_NORMAL table is organized and that the TEST_RANDOM table is randomly created and hence has disorganized data. In the above table, culumn EMPNO has 100-percent distinct values and is a good candidate to become a primary key.
What is Bitmap Index in SQL server and what are its applications?
Answer (1 of 2): To be 100% clear, Microsoft SQL Server (assuming this is what you mean) does not support Bitmap Indexes. It has a feature called Bitmap Filters, which are different but similar [1]. Assuming you are asking the broader question about when are bitmap indexes useful, they are inter...
database - Oracle's Bitmap Index in SQL Server - Stack Overflow
I've been successfully using bitmap indexes for years in Oracle environment. Now I'm working on a data warehouse project which will be hosted on SQL Server 2005. So far, I was unable to find an ans...
What is bitmap indexing?
Bitmap Indexing is a special type of database indexing that uses bitmaps. This technique is used for huge databases, when column is of low cardinality and these columns are most frequently used in the query. Need of Bitmap Indexing –.
How many rows are there in a bitmap index?
If New_Emp is the data to be indexed, the content of the bitmap index is shown as four ( As we have four rows in the above table) columns under the heading Bitmap Indices. Here Bitmap Index “Yes” has value 1001 because row 1 and row four has value “Yes” in column New_Emp.
How many bitmaps are there in a new_emp?
In this case there are two such bitmaps, one for “New_Emp” Yes and one for “New_Emp” NO. It is easy to see that each bit in bitmap indices shows that whether a particular row refer to a person who is New to the company or not.
What is a bit in a binary?
Bit: Bit is a basic unit of information used in computing that can have only one of two values either 0 or 1 . The two values of a binary digit can also be interpreted as logical values true/false or yes/no. In Bitmap Indexing these bits are used to represent the unique values in those low cardinality columns.
What does the result 0100 mean?
Here the result 0100 represents that the second column has to be retrieved as a result.
What is bitmap index?
A bitmap index is a special kind of database index which uses bitmaps or bit array. In a bitmap index, Oracle stores a bitmap for each index key. Each index key stores pointers to multiple rows. For example, if you create a bitmap index on the gender column of the members table. The structure of the bitmap index looks like the following picture: ...
What index is used to query members by gender?
Now, if you query members by gender, the optimizer will consider using the bitmap index:
What is the mapping function in Oracle?
Oracle uses a mapping function to converts each bit in the bitmap to the corresponding rowid of the members table.
Is a bitmap index good for read only tables?
Infrequently updated or read-only tables. Maintaining a bitmap index takes a lot of resources, therefore, bitmap indexes are only good for the read-only tables or tables that have infrequently updates. Therefore, you often find bitmap indexes are extensively used in the data warehouse environment.
Does bitmap index cause deadlock?
Notice that using a bitmap index for a table that has many single row update, especially concurrent single row update will cause a deadlock.
How big is the bitmap index?
The size of the bitmap index on this culumn is around 570KB, as indicated in the table below:
What is the difference between a B tree index and a bitmap index?
As you can see here, with the B-tree index, the optimizer opted for a full table scan, whereas in the case of the bitmap index, it used the index to answer the query. You can deduce performance by the number of I/Os required to fetch the result.
Which index is most appropriate for columns with low distinct values?
Conventional wisdom hulds that bitmap indexes are most appropriate for columns having low distinct values--such as GENDER, MARITAL_STATUS, and RELATION. This assumption is not completely accurate, however. In reality, a bitmap index is always advisable for systems in which data is not frequently updated by many concurrent systems.
Does Oracle recommend bitmap index?
There are several disadvantages to using a bitmap index on a unique culumn--one being the need for sufficient space (and Oracle does not recommend it). However, the size of the bitmap index depends on the cardinality of the culumn on which it is created as well as the data distribution. Consequently, a bitmap index on the GENDER culumn will be ...
Is a bitmap index a culumn?
In reality, a bitmap index is always advisable for systems in which data is not frequently updated by many concurrent systems. In fact, as I'll demonstrate here, a bitmap index on a culumn with 100-percent unique values (a culumn candidate for primary key) is as efficient as a B-tree index. In this article I'll provide some examples, along ...
Does the optimizer consider the value of the clustering factor when generating execution plans using a bitmap index?
This disparity is due to the clustering factor: The optimizer does not consider the value of the clustering factor when generating execution plans using a bitmap index, whereas for a B-tree index, it does. In this scenario, the bitmap index performs more efficiently than the B-tree index.
What is a bitmap index?
Oracle Bitmap Index is a schema object which contains an entry for each value that appears in the indexed column (s) of the Table or Cluster. It provides direct and fast access to rows.
How many columns can be in a composite bitmap index?
The composite bitmap index can be created upon a table to the maximum collection of 32 columns.
What is index name?
IndexName: It can be any name of that Index object according to the Oracle naming convention.
How does index reduce disk I/O?
Index reduces the disk I/O by using a rapid path access method to locate the data quickly.
Where to check index?
The index can be checked from the USER_INDEXES data dictionary.
Can you specify bitmap when creating global partitioned index?
Bitmap cannot be specified when creating a global partitioned index.
Is index independent of table?
Indexes are independent of the table it Indexes, both logically and physically.
Why use bitmap index?
Bitmap Indexes are used for indexing columns which have low cardinality. Before we begin understanding about Bitmap indexes, lets revisit the concept of indexes and why we create them. An index in Oracle helps us in fetching data from tables much more efficiently. We create index when these conditions are met:
What is index_name?
index_name – It is the name of index that we want to create.
Does Oracle use index?
Each time we query the interns based on their citizenship, Oracle will use index instead of doing a full table scan.
Which column only contains M and F?
But we may across columns which have very low cardinality, i.e, unique set of values. For example, Gender column which contains only ‘M’ and ‘F’ or US_Citizen column which only contains ‘Y’ or ‘N’.
Can you use Bitmap Indexes in Oracle?
Currently, we can only use Bitmap Indexes in Enterprise edition of Oracle and not Express Edition.
Why are bitmap indexes useful?
Bitmap indexes are also useful in data warehousing applications for joining a large fact table to smaller dimension tables such as those arranged in a star schema.
What is a bitmap index?
A bitmap index is a special type of index designed for efficient query processing on multiple keys. It is a binary valued two-dimensional array created with an indexed column for every record in the table. Bitmap indexes use bit arrays (commonly called bitmaps) and answer queries by performing bitwise logical operations on these bitmaps. As the number of distinct values increases, the size of the bitmap increases exponentially. The bit in a row of bitmap is “1” if the record has the value v for the indexed attribute, or “0” otherwise.
When to use bitmaps?
You use bitmaps predominantly when you want to merge together many of them at run time and there is no sensible way to B-Tree index them. For example: in an ad-hoc query environment where the users might pick any N columns out of M and query on them – no way to B-Tree index them – but you could create a series of single column bitmaps that we’ll merge together using AND/OR’s to create a new bitmap index on the fly to find your rows. Just like B-Tree indexes, bitmap indexes are best leveraged when the combination of them makes it very selective (returns only a small number of rows).
Can Oracle lock a bitmap?
If a session modifies the indexed data, then all of the rows that index entry points are effectively locked in most cases. Oracle cannot lock an individual bit in a bitmap index entry; it locks the entire bitmap index entry. Any other modifications that need to update the same bitmap index entry will be locked out.
Can bitmap indexes be used for indexing?
One belief concerning bitmap indexes is that they are only suitable for indexing low-cardinality data. This is not necessarily true, and bitmap indexes can be used successfully for indexing columns with many thousands of different values.
Where to Use Bitmap Index ?
In this section i would like to give you where exactly user needs to use the Bitmap indexes.Bitmap indexes will be used when there are multiple distinct values. I will recommend you to use bitmap index when the distinct values are between 1 to 100.Kindly make sure that following important points before using Bitmap indexes.
What are the advantages of using a bitmap index?
These are some advantages of using Bitmap indexes. Bitmap index will create two dimensional array for every row in table column which being indexed.The key advantage of using bitmap index is space utilization.The bitmap indexes will take less space than simple index.Regular index will create list of row-ids and bitmap indexes will create bitmap of each key value.Bitmap indexes will provide the most effective performance for the columns in Where clause.
When are bitmap indexes useful?
The Bitmap indexes can be useful when Is Null condition is there.Make sure that the count of distinct values are less than 100.
Can you create composite bitmap indexes?
User can create Composite bitmap indexes on joining tables .Lets say there are two tables Student and Student_Master which contains Grade and Marks column.The Joining condition will be will Student_id.Then Following index will be useful,
Can you create bitmap indexes on partitioned tables?
User can create bitmap indexes on partitioned tables but make sure that those indexes are local indexes.Lets say Student table is partitioned table and user needs to create index on Grade column.Then user needs to use local keyword to create index.

Points of Concentration
Restriction on Bitmap Index
Syntax
Description
- IndexName: It can be any name of that Index object according to the Oracle naming convention.
- TableSpaceName: It is a logical storage name where that index object will be stored.
Examples of Oracle Bitmap Index
- In this section, we’ll see the implementation of the Oracle BITMAP Index and its behavior. For that, we will use the below sample table (Employee) with 14 records to understand the Oracle BITMAP Index behavior. SELECT * FROM Employee; Output:
Conclusion
- Oracle BITMAP Indexes are very useful for the static table or static column. It is also useful for the Materialized view. Need to take extra care about distinct key values to create a BITMAP index.
Recommended Articles
- This is a guide to Oracle Bitmap Index. Here we discuss the points of concentration, restriction on BITMAP Index with query examples. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more – 1. Oracle Users 2. Oracle EXTRACT() 3. Oracle LOCK TABLE 4. Oracle ROLLBACK