What are indexes in a database used for? Can an excess of indexes negatively affect performance?

Indexes in a database are needed to speed up search and data retrieval. They create a structure that allows quick finding of records without scanning the entire table, significantly improving the performance of SELECT queries.

However, an excess of indexes can negatively impact performance:

• When inserting, updating, or deleting data, indexes need to be updated, which slows down these operations.
• They occupy additional disk space.
• It becomes more difficult to optimize queries if there are too many indexes.

Therefore, it is important to balance the number of indexes, creating them only on fields that are frequently used in search conditions or sorting.