Indexing

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

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

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

 E.g., author catalog in library
 Search Key - attribute to set of attributes used to look up records in a
file.
 An index file consists of records (called index entries) of the form

search-key pointer
 Index files are typically much smaller than the original file
 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 - 6th Edition 11.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Evaluation Metrics
 Access types supported efficiently. E.g.,
 records with a specified value in the attribute
 or records with an attribute value falling in a specified range of
values.
 Access time
 Insertion time
 Deletion time
 Space overhead

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Ordered Indices

 In an ordered index, index entries are stored sorted on the search key
value. E.g., author catalog in library.
 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
non-clustering index.
 Index-sequential file: ordered sequential file with a primary index.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dense Index Files
 Dense index — Index record appears for every search-key
value in the file.
 E.g. index on ID attribute of instructor relation

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dense Index Files (Cont.)
 Dense index on dept_name, with instructor file sorted on
dept_name

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Sparse Index Files
 Sparse Index: contains index records for only some search-key
values.
 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 - 6th Edition 11.7 ©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: sparse index with an index entry for every block in file,
corresponding to least search-key value in the block.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.8 ©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 - 6th Edition 11.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Primary and Secondary Indices
 Indices offer substantial benefits when searching for records.
 BUT: Updating indices imposes overhead on database
modification --when a file is modified, every index on the file
must be updated,
 Sequential scan using primary index is efficient, but a
sequential scan using a secondary index is expensive
 Each record access may fetch a new block from disk
 Block fetch requires about 5 to 10 milliseconds, versus
about 100 nanoseconds for memory access

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index
 If primary index does not fit in memory, access becomes
expensive.
 Solution: treat primary index kept on disk as a sequential file
and construct a sparse index on it.
 outer index – a sparse index of primary index
 inner index – the primary 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 - 6th Edition 11.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Update: Deletion

 If deleted record was the

only record in the file with its
particular search-key value,
the search-key is deleted
from the index also.
 Single-level index entry deletion:
 Dense indices – deletion of search-key is similar to file record
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 - 6th Edition 11.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Update: Insertion
 Single-level index insertion:
 Perform a lookup using the search-key value appearing in
the record to be inserted.
 Dense indices – if the search-key value does not appear in
the index, insert it.
 Sparse indices – if index stores an entry for each block of
the file, 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.
 Multilevel insertion and deletion: algorithms are simple
extensions of the single-level algorithms

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Secondary Indices
 Frequently, one wants to find all the records whose values in
a certain field (which is not the search-key of the primary
index) satisfy some condition.
 Example 1: In the instructor relation stored sequentially by
ID, we may want to find all instructors in a particular
department
 Example 2: as above, but where we want to find all
instructors with a specified salary or with salary in a
specified range of values
 We can have a secondary index with an index record for
each search-key value

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan