How do indexes speed up query execution in a database and facilitate data handling?

Database indexes are special data structures that speed up searching and sorting records.

How they work:

• Instead of scanning all rows in a table (full scan), an index allows quick access to records by key.
• An index is usually implemented as a tree (e.g., B-tree), which provides logarithmic search time.

This makes working with data easier because:

• Queries with WHERE, JOIN, ORDER BY conditions execute faster.
• It reduces the load on the CPU and disk.

Example: if you have a user table with an index on the email field, searching for a user by email will be much faster than without an index.