How to create an Index in Amazon Redshift

Question

I'm trying to create indexes in Amazon Redshift but I received an error

create index on session_log(UserId);

UserId is an integer field.

Answer 1

If you try and create an index (with a name) on a Redshift table:

create index IX1 on "SomeTable"("UserId");

You'll receive the error

An error occurred when executing the SQL command: create index IX1 on "SomeTable"("UserId") ERROR: SQL command "create index IX1 on "SomeTable"("UserId")" not supported on Redshift tables.

This is because, like other data warehouses, Redshift uses columnar storage, and as a result, many of the indexing techniques (like adding non-clustered indexes) used in other RDBMS aren't applicable.

You do however have the option of providing a single sort key per table, and you can also influence performance with a distribution key for sharding your data, and selecting appropriate compression encodings for each column to minimize storage and I/O overheads.

For example, in your case, you may elect to use UserId as a sort key:

create table if not exists "SomeTable"
(
    "UserId" int,
    "Name" text
)
sortkey("UserId");

You might want to read a few primers like these