Are page numbers of a book a good analogy for a clustered index? The title pretty much covers the question.
I think that the index of a book is a good analogy for a non-clustered index, as it demonstrates the extra storage and physical separation properties of a non-clustered index. I also think that the page numbers of a book represent well the physical ordering of data, similar to the structure of data with a clustered index.
However I'm a bit of a newbie to more advanced database theory. Does the analogy for page numbering make sense for a clustered index, or are there any properties of a clustered index where this analogy falls over?

Please note that the terminology of pages in the question refers to pages of a physical book, such as George Orwell's 1984, and not database pages.
Unfortunately I don't think there is a proper StackExchange for theoretical questions, but hopefully you gather good enough information here
Typically the &quot;Phonebook&quot; makes for a good analogy of how indexes work, not only because of the pages sorted by Names (i.e. the nodes of the B-Tree) but the sorting of the LastName, FirstName of the individual People within a specific page being representative of the leaves of the B-Tree. Brent Ozar has a good in-depth article on how indexing works that utilizes this analogy.