Chapter 17 Disk Storage, Basic File Structures, and Hashing

Disk Storage Devices

 Preferred secondary storage device for high storage capacity and low cost.
 Data stored as magnetized areas on magnetic disk surfaces.
 A disk pack contains several magnetic disks connected to a rotating spindle.
 Disks are divided into concentric circular tracks on each disk surface.
o Track capacities vary typically from 4 to 50 Kbytes or more
 A track is divided into smaller blocks or sectors
o because it usually contains a large amount of information
 The division of a track into sectors is hard-coded on the disk surface and cannot be changed.
o One type of sector organization calls a portion of a track that subtends a fixed angle at the
center as a sector.
 A track is divided into blocks.
o The block size B is fixed for each system.
 Typical block sizes range from B=512 bytes to B=4096 bytes.
o Whole blocks are transferred between disk and main memory for processing.

 A read-write head moves to the track that contains the block to be transferred.

1
 o Disk rotation moves the block under the read-write head for reading or writing.
 A physical disk block (hardware) address consists of:
o a cylinder number (imaginary collection of tracks of same radius from all recorded
surfaces), the track number or surface number (within the cylinder), and block number
(within track).
 Reading or writing a disk block is time consuming because of the seek time s and rotational delay
(latency) rd.
 Double buffering can be used to speed up the transfer of contiguous disk blocks.

Double Buffering

Records
 Fixed and variable length records
 Records contain fields which have values of a particular type
o E.g., amount, date, time, age
 Fields themselves may be fixed length or variable length
 Variable length fields can be mixed into one record:
o Separator characters or length fields are needed so that the record can be “parsed.”

Fixed or Variable length Records

2
Blocking

 Blocking:
o Refers to storing a number of records in one block on the disk.
 Blocking factor (bfr) refers to the number of records per block.
 There may be empty space in a block if an integral number of records do not fit in one block.
 Spanned Records:
o Refers to records that exceed the size of one or more blocks and hence span a number of
blocks.

Files of Records

 A file is a sequence of records, where each record is a collection of data values (or data items).
 A file descriptor (or file header) includes information that describes the file, such as the field
names and their data types, and the addresses of the file blocks on disk.
 Records are stored on disk blocks.
 The blocking factor bfr for a file is the (average) number of file records stored in a disk block.
 A file can have fixed-length records or variable-length records.
 File records can be unspanned or spanned
 Unspanned: no record can span two blocks
 Spanned: a record can be stored in more than one block
 The physical disk blocks that are allocated to hold the records of a file can be contiguous,
linked, or indexed.

3
  In a file of fixed-length records, all records have the same format. Usually, unspanned
blocking is used with such files.
 Files of variable-length records require additional information to be stored in each record,
such as separator characters and field types.
 Usually spanned blocking is used with such files.

Unspanned and Spanned Records

Operation on Files
 Typical file operations include:
o OPEN: Readies the file for access, and associates a pointer that will refer to a current file
record at each point in time.
o FIND: Searches for the first file record that satisfies a certain condition, and makes it the
current file record.
o FINDNEXT: Searches for the next file record (from the current record) that satisfies a
certain condition, and makes it the current file record.
o READ: Reads the current file record into a program variable.
o INSERT: Inserts a new record into the file & makes it the current file record.
o DELETE: Removes the current file record from the file, usually by marking the record to
indicate that it is no longer valid.
o MODIFY: Changes the values of some fields of the current file record.
o CLOSE: Terminates access to the file.
o REORGANIZE: Reorganizes the file records.
 For example, the records marked deleted are physically removed from the file or
a new organization of the file records is created.
o READ_ORDERED: Read the file blocks in order of a specific field of the file.

Unordered Files
 Also called a heap or a pile file.
 New records are inserted at the end of the file.
 A linear search through the file records is necessary to search for a record.
 This requires reading and searching half the file blocks on the average, and is hence quite
expensive.
 Record insertion is quite efficient.
 Reading the records in order of a particular field requires sorting the file records.

Ordered Files

4
 Also called a sequential file.
 File records are kept sorted by the values of an ordering field.
 Insertion is expensive: records must be inserted in the correct order.
o It is common to keep a separate unordered overflow (or transaction) file for new records
to improve insertion efficiency; this is periodically merged with the main ordered file.
 A binary search can be used to search for a record on its ordering field value.
o This requires reading and searching log2 of the file blocks on the average, an
improvement over linear search.
 Reading the records in order of the ordering field is quite efficient.

5
6
Hashed Files

 Hashing for disk files is called External Hashing

 The file blocks are divided into M equal-sized buckets, numbered bucket0, bucket1, ..., bucketM-1.
o Typically, a bucket corresponds to one (or a fixed number of) disk block.
 One of the file fields is designated to be the hash key of the file.
 The record with hash key value K is stored in bucket i, where i=h(K), and h is the hashing
function.
 Search is very efficient on the hash key.
 Collisions occur when a new record hashes to a bucket that is already full.
o An overflow file is kept for storing such records.
o Overflow records that hash to each bucket can be linked together.

Internal Hashing
 Hash table
o The use of an array of records
o Simple hash function: h(K) = K mod M

 Collision: the same hash values

 There are numerous methods for collision resolution, including the following:
o Open addressing: Proceeding from the occupied position specified by the hash address,
the program checks the subsequent positions in order until an unused (empty) position is
found.
o Chaining: For this method, various overflow locations are kept, usually by extending the
array with a number of overflow positions. In addition, a pointer field is added to each
record location. A collision is resolved by placing the new record in an unused overflow
location and setting the pointer of the occupied hash address location to the address of
that overflow location.
o Multiple hashing: The program applies a second hash function if the first results in a
collision. If another collision results, the program uses open addressing or applies a third
hash function and then uses open addressing if necessary.

7
Hashed Files in External Hashing

8
  To reduce overflow records, a hash file is typically kept 70-80% full.
 The hash function h should distribute the records uniformly among the buckets
o Otherwise, search time will be increased because many overflow records will exist.
 Main disadvantages of static external hashing:
o Fixed number of buckets M is a problem if the number of records in the file grows or
shrinks.
o Ordered access on the hash key (order preserving hashing) is quite inefficient (requires
sorting the records).

Dynamic and Extendible Hashed Files

 Dynamic and Extendible Hashing Techniques
o Hashing techniques are adapted to allow the dynamic growth and shrinking of the
number of file records.
o These techniques include the following: dynamic hashing, extendible hashing, and linear
hashing.
 Both dynamic and extendible hashing use the binary representation of the hash value h(K) in
order to access a directory.
o In dynamic hashing the directory is a binary tree.
o In extendible hashing the directory is an array of size 2d where d is called the global
depth.

 The directories can be stored on disk, and they expand or shrink dynamically.
o Directory entries point to the disk blocks that contain the stored records.

9
 An insertion in a disk block that is full causes the block to split into two blocks and the records
are redistributed among the two blocks.
o The directory is updated appropriately.
 Dynamic and extendible hashing does not require an overflow area.
 Linear hashing does require an overflow area but does not use a directory.
o Blocks are split in linear order as the file expands.

10