a method , apparatus , and article of manufacture for a computer implemented recover / build index system . the recover / build index system builds a database index for a database file by scanning partitions of the database file in parallel to retrieve key values and their associated record identifier values . the recover / build index system then sorts the scanned key / rid values for each partition in parallel . next , the recover / build index system performs one or more merges on the sorted key / rid values from all of the partitions to generate a single key / rid value stream . finally , the recover / build index system builds the index using the single key / rid value stream .