Types of File Organizations –

Various methods have been introduced to Organize files. These particular methods have advantages and
disadvantages on the basis of access or selection . Thus it is all upon the programmer to decide the best suited
file Organization method according to his requirements.
Some types of File Organizations are :
 Sequential File Organization
 Heap File Organization
 Hash File Organization
 B+ Tree File Organization
 Clustered File Organization

Sequential File Organization –

The easiest method for file Organization is Sequential method. In this method the file are stored one after
another in a sequential manner. There are two ways to implement this method:
1. Pile File Method – This method is quite simple, in which we store the records in a sequence i.e one after
other in the order in which they are inserted into the tables.
 Insertion of new record –
Let the R1, R3 and so on upto R5 and R4 be four records in the sequence. Here, records are nothing but a
row in any table. Suppose a new record R2 has to be inserted in the sequence, then it is simply placed at
the end of the file.

2. Sorted File Method –In this method, As the name itself suggest whenever a new record has to be inserted,
it is always inserted in a sorted (ascending or descending) manner. Sorting of records may be based on any
primary key or any other key.

Insertion of new record –

Let us assume that there is a preexisting sorted sequence of four records R1, R3, and so on upto R7 and
R8. Suppose a new record R2 has to be inserted in the sequence, then it will be inserted at the end of the
file and then it will sort the sequence .
Pros and Cons of Sequential File Organization –
Pros –
 Fast and efficient method for huge amount of data.
 Simple design.
 Files can be easily stored in magnetic tapes i.e cheaper storage mechanism.
Cons –
 Time wastage as we cannot jump on a particular record that is required, but we have to move in a
sequential manner which takes our time.
 Sorted file method is inefficient as it takes time and space for sorting records.

Heap File Organization –

Heap File Organization works with data blocks. In this method records are inserted at the end of the file, into the
data blocks. No Sorting or Ordering is required in this method. If a data block is full, the new record is stored in
some other block, Here the other data block need not be the very next data block, but it can be any block in the
memory. It is the responsibility of DBMS to store and manage the new records.
Insertion of new record –
Suppose we have four records in the heap R1, R5, R6, R4 and R3 and suppose a new record R2 has to be
inserted in the heap then, since the last data block i.e data block 3 is full it will be inserted in any of the data
blocks selected by the DBMS, lets say data block 1.

If we want to search, delete or update data in heap file Organization then we will traverse the data from the
beginning of the file till we get the requested record. Thus if the database is very huge, searching, deleting or
updating the record will take a lot of time.
Pros and Cons of Heap File Organization –
Pros –
 Fetching and retrieving records is faster than sequential record but only in case of small databases.
 When there is a huge number of data needs to be loaded into the database at a time, then this method of
file Organization is best suited.
Cons –
 Problem of unused memory blocks.
  Inefficient for larger databases.

Hashing
In database management system, When we want to retrieve a particular data, It becomes very inefficient to
search all the index values and reach the desired data. In this situation, Hashing technique comes into picture.
Hashing is an efficient technique to directly search the location of desired data on the disk without using index
structure. Data is stored at the data blocks whose address is generated by using hash function. The memory
location where these records are stored is called as data block or data bucket.

Hash File Organization :

 Data bucket – Data buckets are the memory locations where the records are stored. These buckets are
also considered as Unit Of Storage.
 Hash Function – Hash function is a mapping function that maps all the set of search keys to actual record
address. Generally, hash function uses primary key to generate the hash index – address of the data block.
Hash function can be simple mathematical function to any complex mathematical function.
 Hash Index-The prefix of an entire hash value is taken as a hash index. Every hash index has a depth value
to signify how many bits are used for computing a hash function. These bits can address 2n buckets. When
all these bits are consumed ? then the depth value is increased linearly and twice the buckets are allocated.
Below given diagram clearly depicts how hash function work:
Hashing is further divided into two sub categories :
Static Hashing –

In static hashing, when a search-key value is provided, the hash function always computes the same address.
For example, if we want to generate address for STUDENT_ID = 76 using mod (5) hash function, it always result
in the same bucket address 4. There will not be any changes to the bucket address here. Hence number of data
buckets in the memory for this static hashing remains constant throughout.

Operations –
 Insertion – When a new record is inserted into the table, The hash function h generate a bucket address for
the new record based on its hash key K.
Bucket address = h(K)
 Searching – When a record needs to be searched, The same hash function is used to retrieve the bucket
address for the record. For Example, if we want to retrieve whole record for ID 76, and if the hash function is
mod (5) on that ID, the bucket address generated would be 4. Then we will directly got to address 4 and
retrieve the whole record for ID 104. Here ID acts as a hash key.
 Deletion – If we want to delete a record, Using the hash function we will first fetch the record which is
supposed to be deleted. Then we will remove the records for that address in memory.
 Updation – The data record that needs to be updated is first searched using hash function, and then the
data record is updated.
Now, If we want to insert some new records into the file But the data bucket address generated by the hash
function is not empty or the data already exists in that address. This becomes a critical situation to handle. This
situation in the static hashing is called bucket overflow.
How will we insert data in this case?
There are several methods provided to overcome this situation. Some commonly used methods are discussed
below:
1. Open Hashing –
In Open hashing method, next available data block is used to enter the new record, instead of overwriting
older one. This method is also called linear probing.
 For example, D3 is a new record which needs to be inserted , the hash function generates address as 105.
But it is already full. So the system searches next available data bucket, 123 and assigns D3 to it.

2. Closed hashing –
In Closed hashing method, a new data bucket is allocated with same address and is linked it after the full
data bucket. This method is also known as overflow chaining.
For example, we have to insert a new record D3 into the tables. The static hash function generates the data
bucket address as 105. But this bucket is full to store the new data. In this case is a new data bucket is
added at the end of 105 data bucket and is linked to it. Then new record D3 is inserted into the new bucket.

 Quadratic probing :
Quadratic probing is very much similar to open hashing or linear probing. Here, The only difference
between old and new bucket is linear. Quadratic function is used to determine the new bucket address.
  Double Hashing :
Double Hashing is another method similar to linear probing. Here the difference is fixed as in linear
probing, but this fixed difference is calculated by using another hash function. That’s why the name is
double hashing.

Dynamic Hashing –

The drawback of static hashing is that that it does not expand or shrink dynamically as the size of the database
grows or shrinks. In Dynamic hashing, data buckets grows or shrinks (added or removed dynamically) as the
records increases or decreases. Dynamic hashing is also known as extended hashing.
In dynamic hashing, the hash function is made to produce a large number of values. For Example, there are
three data records D1, D2 and D3 . The hash function generates three addresses 1001, 0101 and 1010
respectively. This method of storing considers only part of this address – especially only first one bit to store the
data. So it tries to load three of them at address 0 and 1.
But the problem is that No bucket address is remaining for D3. The bucket has to grow dynamically to
accommodate D3. So it changes the address have 2 bits rather than 1 bit, and then it updates the existing data
to have 2 bit address. Then it tries to accommodate D3.
B+ Tree File Organization –
B+ Tree, as the name suggests, It uses a tree like structure to store records in File. It uses the concept of Key indexing where the
primary key is used to sort the records. For each primary key, an index value is generated and mapped with the record. An index of
a record is the address of record in the file.
B+ Tree is very much similar to binary search tree, with the only difference that instead of just two children, it can have more than
two. All the information is stored in leaf node and the intermediate nodes acts as pointer to the leaf nodes. The information in leaf
nodes always remain a sorted sequential linked list.
In the above diagram 56 is the root node which is also called the main node of the tree.
The intermediate nodes here, just consist the address of leaf nodes. They do not contain any actual record. Leaf nodes consist of
the actual record. All leaf nodes are balanced.

Pros and Cons of B+ Tree File Organization –

Pros –
 Tree traversal is easier and faster.
 Searching becomes easy as all records are stored only in leaf nodes and are sorted sequential linked list.
 There is no restriction on B+ tree size. It may grows/shrink as the size of data increases/decreases.
Cons –
 Inefficient for static tables.

Cluster File Organization –

In cluster file organization, two or more related tables/records are stored within the same file known as clusters. These files will
have two or more tables in the same data block and the key attributes which are used to map these table together are stored only
once.
Thus it lowers the cost of searching and retrieving various records in different files as they are now combined and kept in a single
cluster.
For example we have two tables or relation Employee and Department. These table are related to each other.
Therefore these table are allowed to combine using a join operation and can be seen in a cluster file.
If we have to insert, update or delete any record we can directly do so. Data is sorted based on the primary key or the key with
which searching is done. Cluster key is the key with which joining of the table is performed.
Types of Cluster File Organization – There are two ways to implement this method:
1. Indexed Clusters – In Indexed clustering the records are group based on the cluster key and stored together. The above
mentioned example of Employee and Department relationship is an example of Indexed Cluster where the records are based
on the Department ID.
2. Hash Clusters – This is very much similar to indexed cluster with only difference that instead of storing the records based on
cluster key, we generate hash key value and store the records with same hash key value.