title: Database Indexes B-Trees and Lists
body: <p>Can anyone explain why databases tend to use b-tree indexes rather than a linked list of ordered elements. </p>
  
  <p>My thinking is this: On a B+ Tree (used by most databases), the none-leaf nodes are a collection of pointers to other nodes. Each collection (node) is a ordered list. The leaf nodes, which is where all the data pointers are, is a linked list of clusters of data pointers. </p>
  
  <p>The non-leaf nodes are just used to find the correct leaf node in which your target data pointer lives. So as the leaf nodes are just like a linked list, then why not just do away with the tree elements and just have the linked list. Meta data can be provided which gives the minimum and maximum value of each leaf node cluster, so the application can just read the meta data and find the correct leaf where the data pointer lives. </p>
  
  <p>Just to be clear that the most efficent algorithm for searching an random accessed ordered list is an binary search which has a performance of O(log n) which is the same as a b-tree. The benifit of using a linked list rather than a tree is that they don't need to be ballanced.</p>
  
  <p>Is this structure feasible.</p>