A step-by-step approach for adding indexes with confidence and validating impact under production load.
Measure before indexing
Capture baseline latency and query plans before adding any index. Without a baseline, every improvement is just a guess.
Index for access patterns
Indexes should mirror WHERE, JOIN, and ORDER BY clauses in real traffic. Composite indexes are often better than multiple single-column indexes.
Watch write amplification
Every index speeds reads and slows writes. For high-ingest tables, keep index count lean and review bloat regularly.
