Chapter 11: Indexing and Hashing

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Chapter 12: Indexing and Hashing
 Basic Concepts
 Dense and sparse Index
 Secondary Indices
 Ordered Indices
 Tree-Structure Indexing: B+-Tree Index Files

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 11.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Ordered Indices

 In an ordered index, index entries are stored and 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 11.5 ©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 11.6 ©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 11.7 ©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 11.8 ©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 11.9 ©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 11.10 ©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 11.11 ©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 11.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.13 ©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(may be of next block/row) 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 11.14 ©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.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.15 ©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 11.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Index Files

B+-tree indices are an alternative to indexed-sequential files.

 Disadvantage of indexed-sequential files
 performance degrades as file grows, since many
overflow blocks get created.
 Periodic re-organization 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 - 6th Edition 11.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-Tree

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.18 ©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
 Each node that is not a root or a leaf has
between n/2 and n children.
 A leaf node has between (n–1)/2 and n–1
values
 Special cases:
 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 - 6th Edition 11.19 ©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 - 6th Edition 11.20 ©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 Ki,
 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 - 6th Edition 11.21 ©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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.22 ©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 - 6th Edition 11.23 ©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 - 6th Edition 11.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Queries on B+-Trees
 Find record with search-key value V.
1. C=root
2. While C is not a leaf node {
1. Let i be least value s.t. V  Ki.
2. If no such exists, set C = last non-null pointer in C
3. Else { if (V= Ki ) Set C = Pi +1 else set C = Pi}
}
3. Let i be least value s.t. Ki = V
4. If there is such a value i, follow pointer Pi to the desired
record.
5. Else no record with search-key value k exists.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling Duplicates
 With duplicate search keys
 In both leaf and internal nodes,
 we cannot guarantee that K1 < K2 < K3 < . . . <
Kn–1
 but can guarantee K1  K2  K3  . . .  Kn–1
 Search-keys in the subtree to which Pi points
 are  Ki,, but not necessarily < Ki,
 To see why, suppose same search key value V
is present in two leaf node Li and Li+1. Then in
parent node Ki must be equal to V

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling Duplicates
 We modify find procedure as follows
 traverse Pi even if V = Ki
 As soon as we reach a leaf node C check if
C has only search key values less than V
if so set C = right sibling of C before
checking whether C contains V
 Procedure printAll
 uses modified find procedure to find first
occurrence of V
 Traverse through consecutive leaves to
find all occurrences of V

** Errata note: modified find procedure missing in first printing of 6 th edition

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.27 ©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.
 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 - 6th Edition 11.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Insertion
1. Find the leaf node in which the search-key value
would appear
2. If the search-key value is already present in the leaf
node
1. Add record to the file
2. If necessary add a pointer to the bucket.
3. If the search-key value is not present, then
1. add the record to the main file (and create a
bucket if necessary)
2. If there is room in the leaf node, insert (key-
value, pointer) pair in the leaf node
3. Otherwise, split the node (along with the new
(key-value, pointer) entry) as discussed in the
next slide.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.29 ©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 - 6th Edition 11.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Insertion

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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree Insertion

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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.32 ©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
 Read pseudocode in book!
Califieri

Adams Brandt Califieri Crick Adams Brandt Crick

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Examples of B+-Tree Deletion

Before and after deleting “Srinivasan”

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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Examples of B +-Tree Deletion
(Cont.)

Deletion of “Singh” and “Wu” from result of

previous example

 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 - 6th Edition 11.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-tree Deletion (Cont.)

Before and after deletion of “Gold” from earlier example

 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
DatabaseSystem
Root node
Concepts then
- 6th Editionhas only one child, and is deleted
11.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Deletion
 Find the record to be deleted, and remove it from the
main file and from the bucket (if present)
 Remove (search-key value, pointer) from the leaf node if
there is no bucket or if the bucket has become empty
 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 - 6th Edition 11.37 ©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 - 6th Edition 11.38 ©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?)
 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 - 6th Edition 11.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B+-Tree File Organization
 Index file degradation problem is solved by using B+-Tree
indices.
 Data file degradation problem is solved by using B+-Tree
File Organization.
 The leaf nodes in a B+-tree file organization store
records, instead of pointers.
 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 - 6th Edition 11.40 ©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
entries 2n / 3
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.41 ©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 primary-index search key instead of
record pointer in secondary index
 Extra traversal of primary index to locate record
– Higher cost for queries, but node splits are
cheap
 Add record-id if primary-index search key is non-
unique

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 11.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan