When should you apply indexes in your application?

Applying indexes in your application is crucial for optimizing database performance, especially when the performance of your app is not satisfactory. Indexes act like a reference point in a database, enabling the database management system to find data more efficiently by reducing the number of disk reads necessary to retrieve the desired information.

When queries are executed against a database, having the right indexes can significantly speed up these operations, especially for larger datasets. If your application experiences slow response times or lag when retrieving data, this is often a sign that you should consider using indexes. They can significantly improve the speed of read operations by providing a faster path to the requested data.

For instance, in scenarios where you're working with large tables and running frequent queries with filtering or sorting, properly managed indexes can turn a time-consuming data retrieval process into a much more efficient one. Hence, focusing on performance issues is the primary reason to implement indexing in your app.