Comparison of Heap-Organized Tables with Index-Organized Tables

 

Comparison of Heap-Organized Tables with Index-Organized Tables

Heap-Organized Table	Index-Organized Table
The rowid uniquely identifies a row. Primary key constraint may optionally be defined.	Primary key uniquely identifies a row. Primary key constraint must be defined.
Physical rowid in ROWID pseudocolumn allows building secondary indexes.	Logical rowid in ROWID pseudocolumn allows building secondary indexes.
Individual rows may be accessed directly by rowid.	Access to individual rows may be achieved indirectly by primary key.
Sequential full table scan returns all rows in some order.	A full index scan or fast full index scan returns all rows in some order.
Can be stored in a table cluster with other tables.	Cannot be stored in a table cluster.
Can contain a column of the LONG data type and columns of LOB data types.	Can contain LOB columns but not LONG columns.
Can contain virtual columns (only relational heap tables are supported).	Cannot contain virtual columns.

 

（1）A heap-organized table does not store rows in any particular order. The CREATE TABLE statement creates a heap-organized table by default.

       （2）An index-organized table orders rows according to the primary key values. For some applications, index-organized tables enhance performance and use disk space more efficiently. See"Overview of Index-Organized Tables".