1. A method of indexing data and merging indexes within a database management system, comprising: assigning a temporal indicator associated with a start time of a crawl to an instance of an index generated by the crawl, wherein the instance of the index comprises a first index of a plurality of indexes generated by the crawl, wherein the plurality of indexes are database files; assigning the instance of the index to a set of instances of the index to be merged; and validating the set of instances to be merged, generating a set of valid instances.