Inverted index

Inverted Index An inverted index is a database design technique that stores the keywords (terms that users search for) in the index instead of stori...

Inverted Index

An inverted index is a database design technique that stores the keywords (terms that users search for) in the index instead of storing the actual documents. This has several advantages:

Faster searching: When a user searches for a term, the database can quickly find the corresponding documents by searching the index, rather than having to scan through the entire collection of documents.
Improved relevance: The documents in an inverted index are often related to the keywords, so the search results will be more relevant to the user.
Reduced storage space: The index can be much smaller than the original collection of documents, as it only contains the keywords.

How it works:

The index is built by analyzing the documents in the collection and identifying the keywords.
The keywords are then stored in a separate data structure.
When a user searches for a term, the database first searches the index for that term.
If the term is found in the index, the database then searches the original collection of documents for that term.

Example:

Consider a collection of documents on a website that contains books, movies, and software. The documents could be stored in a database with the following fields:

| Document ID | Title | Author |

|---|---|---|

| 1 | The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger |

| 2 | Jurassic Park | Steven Spielberg |

| 3 | Windows 10 | Microsoft |

If we create an inverted index for the "title" field, the index would contain the following entries:

| Title | Document ID |

|---|---|

| The Catcher in the Rye | 1 |

| Jurassic Park | 2 |

| Windows 10 | 3 |

When a user searches for the term "The Catcher in the Rye," the database would first search the index for that term. Since the term is found in the index, the database would then search the original collection of documents for that term