Indexing Tables

Hello,

I am designing an Oracle database and i am slightly puzzled about the fields I should be indexing.

For example in the following table,

table t_inventory_items

has following fields
inventory_item_id - primary key
transfer_orderid - foreign key
unit_id - foreign key
description
no_of_units - (can become 0 if everything is donated) prop_class_id - foreign key ( has only 4 possible values) category_id - foreign key (has 19 possible values) mfr_serial_number
mfr_model

This table will become a large table, data will be stored for atleast ten years before it is
cleaned up.
It is not exactly an inventory table. Transferred items from military bases come to the warehouse
and inventory items are created from that. These are donated to donees. This happens every year
and the data keeps growing.

I have indexed transfer_orderid, no_of_units

I would like to know if the other foreign keys are good choices for indexing when the table is going to be
large.

Thanks in advance

Reddy Received on Wed Jan 07 1998 - 00:00:00 CET