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Does Oracle automatically create a secondary index for FOREIGN KEY columns?

Asked 2012-02-13T15:18:06.837
26

I'm currenly developing on Oracle. I have several tables for which I defined FOREIGN KEY constraints. I have already read this SQL Server-oriented and this MySQL-oriented questions but I could find none about Oracle.

So the question is always the same: in order to optimize query performance, for those columns for which I create a FOREIGN KEY constraint, do I also have to create an explicit secondary index? Doesn't Oracle automatically create an index on FOREIGN KEYed columns to boost performances during JOINs?

I usually perform queries in which the WHERE clause compare against those columns.

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28

No, Oracle doesn't automatically create indexes on foreign key columns, even though in 99% of cases you probably should. Apart from helping with queries, the index also improves the performance of delete statements on the parent table.

answered 2012-02-13T15:20:35.617

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