This article explores the internals of Oracle9i indexing; reviews the standard b-tree index, index-only tables, and how these indexes may increase the speed of Oracle SQL queries.

VoltDB is one example—a distributed, in-memory, massively parallel NewSQL relational database that clearly shows that SQL can be made to scream.

Examples of SQL statements (as explained here) include SELECT, WHERE, FROM and might include references to values in a database such as names, locations and anything else we might care to track.