Expert Indexing in Oracle Database 11g: Maximum Performance for Your Database

CHAPTER 4

Index-Organized Tables

The simplest explanation of an index-organized table is that it is accessed like any other Oracle table (typically a heap-organized table) but is physically stored like an Oracle B-tree index. Index-organized tables are typically created on “thin” tables (tables without too many columns). Typically, multiple columns of the table make up the primary key of the index-organized table. The non-key columns can also be stored as part of the B-tree index. The proper configuration and use of index-organized tables is fairly specific and does not meet all application needs.