Organizing keys and zone maps

Organizing keys and zone maps work together to improve the system's ability to identify the data that is saved within specific extents of the database.

Zone maps summarize the range of data inside the columns of the records that are saved in a disk extent; organizing keys help to narrow the range of data within the extent by grouping the columns that you most often query. If the data is well organized within the extent and the zone maps have smaller “ranges” of data, queries run faster because Netezza Performance Server can skip the extents that contain unrelated data and direct its resources to processing the data that matches the query.