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On Disabling Indexes

Kenneth Fisher has a few notes on disabling indexes:

Indexes are probably the number one tool we have to improve performance. That said, there are times when we want to put that index on hold. While indexes dramatically improve read performance they do cause a slight dip in write performance. This isn’t significant most of the time but when doing a large load it can frequently be faster to get rid of the existing indexes and then put them back when you are done.

I don’t think that I’ve ever regularly disabled indexes, even during bulk loading. It’s good to know that the option exists, however.