In-depth understanding of the creation process of MySQL index - timestamp field

Question

I want to understand how indexes are created in MySQL - i.e. if it is a TimeStamp field - it creates the hash of the TimeStamp field and stores it or only stores the literal value of the timestamp. Since timestamp precision is milliseconds - each index will be unique, so how effective is index creation? Is there any internal information that might help me understand this issue?

Answer 1

When you create an index on a TIMESTAMP field or any other data type, MySQL does not store the hash of the value or the literal value itself as the index key. Instead, it uses a data structure called a B-tree (balanced tree) to organize and store index keys. B-trees are widely used in databases because they provide an efficient way to search, insert, and delete data.