14.23

What trade-offs do write-optimized indices pose as compared to B+-tree indices?

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Write-optimized indices (such as LSM trees, buffer trees, …) have very efficient write methods that are much faster than B+-tree’s writes. But they offer this write efficiency at the cost of lookup efficiency. Lookup on LSM trees for example costs more than lookup on B+-trees, since a single lookup on LSM trees would require looking up multiple B+-trees.