Database Management Systems

Course Code: CSE309

2022

Chapter 14: Indexing and Hashing

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Outline

 Basic Concepts
 Ordered Indices
 B+-Tree Index Files
 B-Tree Index Files
 Hashing
 Write-optimized indices
 Spatio-Temporal Indexing

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Concepts

 Indexing mechanisms used to speed up access to desired data.

• E.g., author catalog in library
 An index file consists of records (called index entries) of the form:

 Search Key - an attribute or a set of attributes used to look up records

in a file.
 Data Reference or Pointer - contains a set of pointers holding the
address of the disk block where that particular search key value can be
found.
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Concepts (Cont.)

 Index files are typically much smaller than the original file
No. of Index Blocks (M) << No. of database file blocks (N)

 Two basic kinds of indices:

• Ordered indices: search keys are stored in sorted order
• Hash indices: search keys are distributed uniformly across
“buckets” using a “hash function”.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Evaluation Metrics

 Access types: The types of access are supported efficiently. E.g.,

• Records with a specified value in the attribute
• Records with an attribute value falling in a specified range of values.
 Access time
 Insertion time
 Deletion time
 Space overhead

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Types of Indices

 Two basic kinds of indices:

• Ordered indices: search keys are stored in sorted order
• Hash indices: search keys are distributed uniformly across
“buckets” using a “hash function”.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Ordered Indices

 In an ordered index, index entries are stored sorted on the search key
value. Two main types of ordered indexing methods are:
 Primary index: in a sequentially ordered file, the index whose search
key specifies the sequential order of the file.
• Also called clustering index
• The search key of a primary index is usually but not necessarily the
primary key.
 Secondary index: an index whose search key specifies an order
different from the sequential order of the file.
• Also called nonclustering index.

 Index-sequential file: sequential file ordered on a search key, with a

clustering index on the search key.
 The indexing is also further divided into two types.
• Dense Index
• Sparse Index

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dense Index Files

 Dense index — Index entry appears for every search-key value in the file.
 E.g. index on ID attribute of instructor relation

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dense Index Files (Cont.)

 The index record contains the search-key value and a pointer to the first
data record with that search-key value.
 The other records with the same search-key value would be sorted
sequentially after the first record.
 Dense index on dept_name, with instructor file sorted on dept_name

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Sparse Index Files

 Sparse Index: Index entry appears for only some of the search-key
values in the file.
• Applicable when records are sequentially ordered on search-key
 To locate a record with search-key value K we:
• Find index record with largest search-key value < K
• Search file sequentially starting at the record to which the index
record points

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Sparse Index Files (Cont.)

 Compared to dense indices:

• Less space and less maintenance overhead for insertions and deletions.
• Generally slower than dense index for locating records.
 Good tradeoff:
• for clustered index: sparse index with an index entry for every block in file,
corresponding to least search-key value in the block.

• For unclustered index: sparse index on top of dense index (multilevel index)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Secondary Indices Example

 Secondary index on salary field of instructor

 Index record points to a bucket that contains pointers to all the actual
records with that particular search-key value.
 Secondary indices have to be dense

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Secondary Indices (Cont.)

 Secondary index has a few drawbacks:

 Index access takes longer, due to an extra level of indirection
 If a search-key has very few or no duplicates, the whole block is
allocated to its associated bucket, a lot of space would be wasted.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index

 If index does not fit in memory, access becomes expensive.

 Solution: treat index kept on disk as a sequential file and construct a
sparse index on it.
• outer index – a sparse index of the basic index
• inner index – the basic index file
 If even outer index is too large to fit in main memory, yet another level of
index can be created, and so on.
 Indices at all levels must be updated on insertion or deletion from the file.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Update: Deletion

 Dense indices
• If deleted record was the only record in the file with its particular
search-key value, the search-key is deleted from the index.
• If the deleted record was the first record with the search-key value, the
system updates the index entry to point to the next record.
• Otherwise, no update is required in the index

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Update: Deletion

 Sparse indices
• if an entry for the search key exists in the index, it is deleted by
replacing the entry in the index with the next search-key value in the
file (in search-key order).
• If the next search-key value already has an index entry, the entry is
deleted instead of being replaced.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Update: Insertion

 Perform a lookup using the search-key value of the record to be

inserted

 Dense indices– if the search-key value does not appear in the index,
insert it
• Indices are maintained as sequential files
• Need to create space for new entry, overflow blocks may be
required

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Update: Insertion

 Sparse indices - We assume that the index stores an entry for each
block. No change needs to be made to the index unless a new block
is created.
• If a new block is created, the first search-key value appearing in
the new block is inserted into the index.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indices on Multiple Keys

 Composite search key

• E.g., index on instructor relation on attributes (name, ID)
• Values are sorted lexicographically
 E.g. (John, 12121) < (John, 13514) and
(John, 13514) < (Peter, 11223)
• Can query on just name, or on (name, ID)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Index Files

 Disadvantage of indexed-sequential files

• Performance degrades as file grows, since many overflow blocks get
created.
• Periodic reorganization of entire file is required.
 Advantage of B+-tree index files:
• Automatically reorganizes itself with small, local, changes, in the
face of insertions and deletions.
• Reorganization of entire file is not required to maintain performance.
 (Minor) disadvantage of B+-trees:
• Extra insertion and deletion overhead, space overhead.
 Advantages of B+-trees outweigh disadvantages
• B+-trees are used extensively

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-Tree

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Index Files (Cont.)

A B+-tree is a rooted tree satisfying the following properties:

 All paths from root to leaf are of the same length
 Non-leaf nodes other than root have between n/2 and n children.
 A leaf node has between (n–1)/2 and n–1 values
 Special cases for root:
• If the root is not a leaf, it has at least 2 children.
• If the root is a leaf (that is, there are no other nodes in the tree), it
can have between 0 and (n–1) values.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Node Structure

 Typical node

• Ki are the search-key values

• Pi are pointers to children (for non-leaf nodes) or pointers to records or
buckets of records (for leaf nodes).
 The search-keys in a node are ordered
K1 < K2 < K3 < . . . < Kn–1
(Initially assume no duplicate keys, address duplicates later)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Leaf Nodes in B+-Trees

Properties of a leaf node:

 For i = 1, 2, . . ., n–1, pointer Pi points to a file record with search-key value
K i,
 If Li, Lj are leaf nodes and i < j, Li’s search-key values are less than or equal
to Lj’s search-key values
 Pn points to next leaf node in search-key order

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Non-Leaf Nodes in B+-Trees

 Non leaf nodes form a multi-level sparse index on the leaf nodes. For a
non-leaf node with m pointers:
• All the search-keys in the subtree to which P1 points are less than K1
• For 2  i  n – 1, all the search-keys in the subtree to which Pi points
have values greater than or equal to Ki–1 and less than Ki
• All the search-keys in the subtree to which Pn points have values
greater than or equal to Kn–1
• General structure

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-tree

 B+-tree for instructor file (n = 6)

 Leaf nodes must have between 3 and 5 values

((n–1)/2 and n –1, with n = 6).
 Non-leaf nodes other than root must have between 3 and 6
children ((n/2 and n with n =6).
 Root must have at least 2 children.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Observations about B+-trees

 Since the inter-node connections are done by pointers, “logically” close

blocks need not be “physically” close.
 The non-leaf levels of the B+-tree form a hierarchy of sparse indices.
 The B+-tree contains a relatively small number of levels
 Level below root has at least 2* n/2 values
 Next level has at least 2* n/2 * n/2 values
 .. etc.
• If there are K search-key values in the file, the tree height is no more
than  logn/2(K)
• thus searches can be conducted efficiently.
 Insertions and deletions to the main file can be handled efficiently, as the
index can be restructured in logarithmic time (as we shall see).

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Queries on B+-Trees

function find(v)
1. C=root
2. while (C is not a leaf node)
1. Let i be least number s.t. V  Ki.
2. if there is no such number i then
3. Set C = last non-null pointer in C
4. else if (v = C.Ki ) Set C = Pi +1
5. else set C = C.Pi
3. if for some i, Ki = V then return C.Pi
4. else return null /* no record with search-key value v exists. */

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Queries on B+-Trees (Cont.)

 Range queries find all records with search key values in a given range
• See book for details of function findRange(lb, ub) which returns set
of all such records
• Real implementations usually provide an iterator interface to fetch
matching records one at a time, using a next() function

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Queries on B+-Trees (Cont.)

 If there are K search-key values in the file, the height of the tree is no
more than logn/2(K).
 A node is generally the same size as a disk block, typically 4 kilobytes
• and n is typically around 100 (40 bytes per index entry).
 With 1 million search key values and n = 100
• at most log50(1,000,000) = 4 nodes are accessed in a lookup
traversal from root to leaf.
 Contrast this with a balanced binary tree with 1 million search key values
— around 20 nodes are accessed in a lookup
• above difference is significant since every node access may need a
disk I/O, costing around 20 milliseconds

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Non-Unique Keys

 If a search key ai is not unique, create instead an index on a composite

key (ai , Ap), which is unique
• Ap could be a primary key, record ID, or any other attribute that
guarantees uniqueness
 Search for ai = v can be implemented by a range search on composite
key, with range (v, - ∞) to (v, + ∞)
 But more I/O operations are needed to fetch the actual records
• If the index is clustering, all accesses are sequential
• If the index is non-clustering, each record access may need an I/O
operation

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Insertion

Assume record already added to the file. Let

l pr be pointer to the record, and let
l v be the search key value of the record
1. Find the leaf node in which the search-key value would appear
1. If there is room in the leaf node, insert (v, pr) pair in the leaf node
2. Otherwise, split the node (along with the new (v, pr) entry) as
discussed in the next slide, and propagate updates to parent nodes.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Insertion (Cont.)

 Splitting a leaf node:

• take the n (search-key value, pointer) pairs (including the one being
inserted) in sorted order. Place the first n/2 in the original node, and
the rest in a new node.
• let the new node be p, and let k be the least key value in p. Insert
(k,p) in the parent of the node being split.
• If the parent is full, split it and propagate the split further up.
 Splitting of nodes proceeds upwards till a node that is not full is found.
• In the worst case the root node may be split increasing the height of
the tree by 1.

Result of splitting node containing Brandt, Califieri and Crick on inserting Adams
Next step: insert entry with (Califieri, pointer-to-new-node) into parent

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Insertion

Affected nodes

B+-Tree before and after insertion of “Adams”

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Insertion

B+-Tree before and after insertion of “Lamport”

Affected nodes

Affected nodes
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Insertion in B+-Trees (Cont.)

 Splitting a non-leaf node: when inserting (k,p) into an already full internal
node N
• Copy N to an in-memory area M with space for n+1 pointers and n
keys
• Insert (k,p) into M
• Copy P1,K1, …, K n/2-1,P n/2 from M back into node N
• Copy Pn/2+1,K n/2+1,…,Kn,Pn+1 from M into newly allocated node N'
• Insert (K n/2,N') into parent N
 Example

 Read pseudocode in book!

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Examples of B+-Tree Deletion

Before and after deleting “Srinivasan”

Affected nodes

 Deleting “Srinivasan” causes merging of under-full leaves

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Examples of B+-Tree Deletion (Cont.)

Before and after deleting “Singh” and “Wu”

Affected nodes

 Leaf containing Singh and Wu became underfull, and borrowed a value

Kim from its left sibling
 Search-key value in the parent changes as a result
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-tree Deletion (Cont.)

Before and after deletion of “Gold”

 Node with Gold and Katz became underfull, and was merged with its sibling
 Parent node becomes underfull, and is merged with its sibling
• Value separating two nodes (at the parent) is pulled down when merging
 Root node then has only one child, and is deleted
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Deletion

Assume record already deleted from file. Let V be the search key value of the
record, and Pr be the pointer to the record.
 Remove (Pr, V) from the leaf node
 If the node has too few entries due to the removal, and the entries in the
node and a sibling fit into a single node, then merge siblings:
• Insert all the search-key values in the two nodes into a single node
(the one on the left), and delete the other node.
• Delete the pair (Ki–1, Pi), where Pi is the pointer to the deleted node,
from its parent, recursively using the above procedure.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Deletion

 Otherwise, if the node has too few entries due to the removal, but the
entries in the node and a sibling do not fit into a single node, then
redistribute pointers:
• Redistribute the pointers between the node and a sibling such that
both have more than the minimum number of entries.
• Update the corresponding search-key value in the parent of the node.
 The node deletions may cascade upwards till a node which has n/2 or
more pointers is found.
 If the root node has only one pointer after deletion, it is deleted and the
sole child becomes the root.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Complexity of Updates

 Cost (in terms of number of I/O operations) of insertion and deletion of a

single entry proportional to height of the tree
• With K entries and maximum fanout of n, worst case complexity of
insert/delete of an entry is O(logn/2(K))
 In practice, number of I/O operations is less:
• Internal nodes tend to be in buffer
• Splits/merges are rare, most insert/delete operations only affect a leaf
node
 Average node occupancy depends on insertion order
• 2/3rds with random, ½ with insertion in sorted order

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Non-Unique Search Keys

 Alternatives to scheme described earlier

• Buckets on separate block (bad idea)
• List of tuple pointers with each key
 Extra code to handle long lists
 Deletion of a tuple can be expensive if there are many duplicates
on search key (why?)
• Worst case complexity may be linear!
 Low space overhead, no extra cost for queries
• Make search key unique by adding a record-identifier
 Extra storage overhead for keys
 Simpler code for insertion/deletion
 Widely used

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree File Organization

 B+-Tree File Organization:

• Leaf nodes in a B+-tree file organization store records, instead of
pointers
• Helps keep data records clustered even when there are
insertions/deletions/updates
 Leaf nodes are still required to be half full
• Since records are larger than pointers, the maximum number of
records that can be stored in a leaf node is less than the number of
pointers in a nonleaf node.
 Insertion and deletion are handled in the same way as insertion and
deletion of entries in a B+-tree index.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree File Organization (Cont.)

 Example of B+-tree File Organization

 Good space utilization important since records use more space than
pointers.
 To improve space utilization, involve more sibling nodes in redistribution
during splits and merges
• Involving 2 siblings in redistribution (to avoid split / merge where
possible) results in each node having at least 2n / 3 entries

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Issues in Indexing

 Record relocation and secondary indices

• If a record moves, all secondary indices that store record pointers
have to be updated
• Node splits in B+-tree file organizations become very expensive
• Solution: use search key of B+-tree file organization instead of record
pointer in secondary index
 Add record-id if B+-tree file organization search key is non-unique
 Extra traversal of file organization to locate record
• Higher cost for queries, but node splits are cheap

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indexing Strings

 Variable length strings as keys

• Variable fanout
• Use space utilization as criterion for splitting, not number of pointers
 Prefix compression
• Key values at internal nodes can be prefixes of full key
 Keep enough characters to distinguish entries in the subtrees
separated by the key value
• E.g., “Silas” and “Silberschatz” can be separated by “Silb”
• Keys in leaf node can be compressed by sharing common prefixes

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.49 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Bulk Loading and Bottom-Up Build

 Inserting entries one-at-a-time into a B+-tree requires  1 IO per entry

• assuming leaf level does not fit in memory
• can be very inefficient for loading a large number of entries at a time
(bulk loading)
 Efficient alternative 1:
• sort entries first (using efficient external-memory sort algorithms
discussed later in Section 12.4)
• insert in sorted order
 insertion will go to existing page (or cause a split)
 much improved IO performance, but most leaf nodes half full
 Efficient alternative 2: Bottom-up B+-tree construction
• As before sort entries
• And then create tree layer-by-layer, starting with leaf level
 details as an exercise
• Implemented as part of bulk-load utility by most database systems

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B-Tree Index Files

 Similar to B+-tree, but B-tree allows search-key values to appear only once;
eliminates redundant storage of search keys.
 Search keys in nonleaf nodes appear nowhere else in the B-tree; an
additional pointer field for each search key in a nonleaf node must be
included.
 Generalized B-tree leaf node

 Nonleaf node – pointers Bi are the bucket or file record pointers.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.51 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B-Tree Index Files (Cont.)

 Advantages of B-Tree indices:

• May use less tree nodes than a corresponding B+-Tree.
• Sometimes possible to find search-key value before reaching leaf
node.
 Disadvantages of B-Tree indices:
• Only small fraction of all search-key values are found early
• Non-leaf nodes are larger, so fan-out is reduced. Thus, B-Trees
typically have greater depth than corresponding B+-Tree
• Insertion and deletion more complicated than in B+-Trees
• Implementation is harder than B+-Trees.
 Typically, advantages of B-Trees do not out weigh disadvantages.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.52 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B-Tree Index File Example

B-tree (above) and B+-tree (below) on same data

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.53 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indexing on Flash

 Random I/O cost much lower on flash

• 20 to 100 microseconds for read/write
 Writes are not in-place, and (eventually) require a more expensive erase
 Optimum page size therefore much smaller
 Bulk-loading still useful since it minimizes page erases
 Write-optimized tree structures (discussed later) have been adapted to
minimize page writes for flash-optimized search trees

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.54 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indexing in Main Memory

 Random access in memory

• Much cheaper than on disk/flash
• But still expensive compared to cache read
• Data structures that make best use of cache preferable
• Binary search for a key value within a large B+-tree node results in
many cache misses
 B+- trees with small nodes that fit in cache line are preferable to reduce
cache misses
 Key idea: use large node size to optimize disk access, but structure data
within a node using a tree with small node size, instead of using an array.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.55 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hashing

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.56 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Static Hashing

 A bucket is a unit of storage containing one or more entries (a bucket

is typically a disk block).
• we obtain the bucket of an entry from its search-key value using a
hash function
 Hash function h is a function from the set of all search-key values K to
the set of all bucket addresses B.
 Hash function is used to locate entries for access, insertion as well as
deletion.
 Entries with different search-key values may be mapped to the same
bucket; thus entire bucket has to be searched sequentially to locate an
entry.
 In a hash index, buckets store entries with pointers to records
 In a hash file-organization buckets store records

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.57 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling of Bucket Overflows

 Bucket overflow can occur because of

• Insufficient buckets
• Skew in distribution of records. This can occur due to two reasons:
 multiple records have same search-key value
 chosen hash function produces non-uniform distribution of key
values
 Although the probability of bucket overflow can be reduced, it cannot be
eliminated; it is handled by using overflow buckets.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.58 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling of Bucket Overflows (Cont.)

 Closed hashing - When buckets are full, then a new data bucket is
allocated for the same hash result and is linked after the previous one. This
mechanism is known as Overflow chaining.

For example: Suppose R3 is a new

address which needs to be inserted
into the table, the hash function
generates address as 110 for it. But
this bucket is full to store the new
data. In this case, a new bucket is
inserted at the end of 110 buckets and
is linked to it.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.59 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling of Bucket Overflows (Cont.)

 Open Hashing – When a hash function generates an address at which

data is already stored, then the next bucket will be allocated to it. This
mechanism is called as Linear Probing.
 For example: suppose R3 is a new address which needs to be inserted, the
hash function generates address as 112 for R3. But the generated address
is already full. So the system searches next available data bucket, 113 and
assigns R3 to it.
 This method is not, is not
suitable for database
applications.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.60 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash Index

hash index on instructor, on attribute ID

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 Example of Hash File Organization

Hash file organization of instructor file, using dept_name as key

(See figure in next slide.)
 There are 10 buckets,
 The binary representation of the I th character is assumed to be the
integer i.
 The hash function returns the sum of the binary representations of the
characters modulo 10
• E.g. h(Music) = 1 h(History) = 2
h(Physics) = 3 h(Elec. Eng.) = 3

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.62 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash File Organization

Hash file organization of instructor file, using dept_name as key.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.63 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deficiencies of Static Hashing

 In static hashing, function h maps search-key values to a fixed set of B of

bucket addresses. Databases grow or shrink with time.
• If initial number of buckets is too small, and file grows, performance
will degrade due to too much overflows.
• If space is allocated for anticipated growth, a significant amount of
space will be wasted initially (and buckets will be underfull).
• If database shrinks, again space will be wasted.
 One solution: periodic re-organization of the file with a new hash function
• Expensive, disrupts normal operations
 Better solution: allow the number of buckets to be modified dynamically.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.64 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dynamic Hashing

 The dynamic hashing approach is used to solve problems like bucket

overflow that can occur with static hashing. As the number of records
increases or decreases, data buckets grow or shrink in this manner.
 Two such dynamic hashing techniques are: linear hashing and extendable
hashing
 Linear Hashing
• Do rehashing in an incremental manner
 Extendable Hashing
• Tailored to disk based hashing, with buckets shared by multiple hash
values
• Doubling of # of entries in hash table, without doubling # of buckets

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.65 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Comparison of Ordered Indexing and Hashing

 Cost of periodic re-organization

 Relative frequency of insertions and deletions
 Is it desirable to optimize average access time at the expense of worst-
case access time?
 Expected type of queries:
• Hashing is generally better at retrieving records having a specified
value of the key.
• If range queries are common, ordered indices are to be preferred
 In practice:
• PostgreSQL supports hash indices, but discourages use due to poor
performance
• Oracle supports static hash organization, but not hash indices
• SQLServer supports only B+-trees

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.66 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Chapter 14

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 14.67 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan