Government of West Bengal

Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia

Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

File Organization in DBMS

A database consists of a huge amount of data. The data is grouped within a table in
RDBMS, and each table has related records. A user can see that the data is stored in form
of tables, but in actual this huge amount of data is stored in physical memory in form of
files.
File – A file is named collection of related information that is recorded on secondary
storage such as magnetic disks, magnetic tables and optical disks.
What is File Organization?
File Organization refers to the logical relationships among various records that constitute
the file, particularly with respect to the means of identification and access to any specific
record. In simple terms, Storing the files in certain order is called file Organization. File
Structure refers to the format of the label and data blocks and of any logical control
record.

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:
1. Sequential File Organization
2. Heap File Organization
3. Hash File Organization
4. B+ Tree File Organization
5. Clustered File Organization
1. 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:
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.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

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, and then it is simply placed at the end of the file.

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.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

 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.
2. 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, let’s say data
block 1.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

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.

Indexing
Indexing is a data structure technique which allows you to quickly retrieve records from a
database file. An Index is a small table having only two columns. The first column
comprises a copy of the primary or candidate key of a table. Its second column contains a
set of pointers for holding the address of the disk block where that specific key value
stored.
An index -
 Takes a search key as input
 Efficiently returns a collection of matching records.
 Types of Indexing

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

Indexing in Database is defined based on its indexing attributes. Two main types of
indexing methods are:
 Primary Indexing
 Secondary Indexing
 Primary Index
Primary Index is an ordered file which is fixed length size with two fields. The first field is
the same a primary key and second, filed is pointed to that specific data block. In the
primary Index, there is always one to one relationship between the entries in the index
table.
The primary Indexing in DBMS is also further divided into two types.
 Dense Index
 Sparse Index
 Dense Index
In a dense index, a record is created for every search key valued in the database. This
helps you to search faster but needs more space to store index records. In this Indexing,
method records contain search key value and points to the real record on the disk.

Sparse Index
It is an index record that appears for only some of the values in the file. Sparse Index helps
you to resolve the issues of dense Indexing in DBMS. In this method of indexing technique,

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

a range of index columns stores the same data block address, and when data needs to be
retrieved, the block address will be fetched.
However, sparse Index stores index records for only some search-key values. It needs less
space, less maintenance overhead for insertion, and deletions but It is slower compared to
the dense Index for locating records.
Below is a database index Example of Sparse Index

Secondary Index
The secondary Index in DBMS can be generated by a field which has a unique value for
each record, and it should be a candidate key. It is also known as a non-clustering index.
This two-level database indexing technique is used to reduce the mapping size of the first
level. For the first level, a large range of numbers is selected because of this; the mapping
size always remains small.
Example of secondary Indexing
Let's understand secondary indexing with a database index example:
In a bank account database, data is stored sequentially by acc_no; you may want to find all
accounts in of a specific branch of ABC bank.
Here, you can have a secondary index in DBMS for every search-key. Index record is a
record point to a bucket that contains pointers to all the records with their specific search-
key value.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

Clustering Index
In a clustered index, records themselves are stored in the Index and not pointers.
Sometimes the Index is created on non-primary key columns which might not be unique for
each record. In such a situation, you can group two or more columns to get the unique
values and create an index which is called clustered Index. This also helps you to identify
the record faster.
Example:
Let's assume that a company recruited many employees in various departments. In this
case, clustering indexing in DBMS should be created for all employees who belong to the
same dept.
It is considered in a single cluster, and index points point to the cluster as a whole. Here,
Department _no is a non-unique key.
What is Multilevel Index?
Multilevel Indexing in Database is created when a primary index does not fit in memory. In
this type of indexing method, you can reduce the number of disk accesses to short any
record and kept on a disk as a sequential file and create a sparse base on that file.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

B-Tree Index
B-tree index is the widely used data structures for tree based indexing in DBMS. It is a
multilevel format of tree based indexing in DBMS technique which has balanced binary
search trees. All leaf nodes of the B tree signify actual data pointers.
Moreover, all leaf nodes are interlinked with a link list, which allows a B tree to support
both random and sequential access.

Lead nodes must have between 2 and 4 values.

Every path from the root to leaf are mostly on an equal length.
Non-leaf nodes apart from the root node have between 3 and 5 children nodes.
Every node which is not a root or a leaf has between n/2] and n children.
Advantages of Indexing
 Important pros/ advantage of Indexing are:
 It helps you to reduce the total number of I/O operations needed to retrieve that
data, so you don't need to access a row in the database from an index structure.
 Offers Faster search and retrieval of data to users.
 Indexing also helps you to reduce tablespace as you don't need to link to a row in a
table, as there is no need to store the ROWID in the Index. Thus you will able to
reduce the tablespace.
 You can't sort data in the lead nodes as the value of the primary key classifies it.
Disadvantages of Indexing
 Important drawbacks/cons of Indexing are:
 To perform the indexing database management system, you need a primary key on
the table with a unique value.
 You can't perform any other indexes in Database on the Indexed data.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

 You are not allowed to partition an index-organized table.

 SQL Indexing Decrease performance in INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE query.

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:

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

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:

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

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.

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.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

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.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

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 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 tables 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.

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 Government of West Bengal
Dr. Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Haldia
Department of Computer Science & Technology
Class Notes on File Organization, Indexing, Hashing in DBMS

For example we have two tables or relation Employee and Department. These table are
related to each other.

Therefore these tables 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:
Indexed Clusters –
In Indexed clustering the records are group based on the cluster key and stored together.
The above mentioned example of the Employee and Department relationship is an
example of Indexed Cluster where the records are based on the Department ID.
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.

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