Chapter 9

Disk Storage and Indexing Structures for

Files

Copyright © 2004 Pearson Education, Inc.

 Outline

Disk Storage Devices

Files of Records
Indexing Structures for Files

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -2

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Disk Storage Devices (cont.)

 Preferred secondary storage device for high

storage capacity and low cost.
 Data stored as magnetized areas on magnetic
disk surfaces.
 A disk pack contains several magnetic disks
connected to a rotating spindle.
 Disks are divided into concentric circular
tracks on each disk surface. Track capacities
vary typically from 4 to 50 Kbytes.
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -3
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
Because a track usually contains a large
amount of information, it is divided into
smaller blocks or sectors.
 The division of a track into sectors is hard-coded on
the disk surface and cannot be changed. One type of
sector organization calls a portion of a track that
subtends a fixed angle at the center as a sector.
 A track is divided into blocks. The block size B is
fixed for each system. Typical block sizes range from
B=512 bytes to B=4096 bytes. Whole blocks are
transferred between disk and main memory for
processing.
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -4
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Disk Storage Devices (cont.)

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -5

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
 A read-write head moves to the track that contains the block to
be transferred. Disk rotation moves the block under the read-
write head for reading or writing.
 A physical disk block (hardware) address consists of a cylinder
number (imaginery collection of tracks of same radius from all
recoreded surfaces), the track number or surface number (within
the cylinder), and block number (within track).
 Reading or writing a disk block is time consuming because of the
seek time s and rotational delay (latency) rd.
 Double buffering can be used to speed up the transfer of
contiguous disk blocks.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -6

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Disk Storage Devices (cont.)

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -7

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Records

Fixed and variable length records

Records contain fields which have values of a particular
type (e.g., amount, date, time, age)
Fields themselves may be fixed length or variable length
Variable length fields can be mixed into one record:
separator characters or length fields are needed so that the
record can be “parsed”.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -8

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Blocking

Blocking: refers to storing a number of records in one blo

ck on the disk.
Blocking factor (bfr) refers to the number of records per
block.
There may be empty space in a block if an integral
number of records do not fit in one block.
Spanned Records: refer to records that exceed the size of
one or more blocks and hence span a number of blocks.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -9

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Files of Records
 A file is a sequence of records, where each record is a
collection of data values (or data items).
 A file descriptor (or file header ) includes information
that describes the file, such as the field names and their
data types, and the addresses of the file blocks on disk.
 Records are stored on disk blocks. The blocking factor
bfr for a file is the (average) number of file records
stored in a disk block.
 A file can have fixed-length records or variable-length
records.
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -10
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Files of Records (cont.)
 File records can be unspanned (no record can span two
blocks) or spanned (a record can be stored in more than
one block).
 The physical disk blocks that are allocated to hold the
records of a file can be contiguous, linked, or indexed.
 In a file of fixed-length records, all records have the
same format. Usually, unspanned blocking is used with
such files.
 Files of variable-length records require additional
information to be stored in each record, such as
separator characters and field types. Usually spanned
blocking is used with such files.
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -11
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Indexing Structures for Files

Types of Single-level Ordered Indexes

– Primary Indexes
– Clustering Indexes
– Secondary Indexes
Multilevel Indexes
Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees and
B+-Trees
Indexes on Multiple Keys

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -12

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Indexes as Access Paths

A single-level index is an auxiliary file that makes it

more efficient to search for a record in the data file.

The index is usually specified on one field of the file

(although it could be specified on several fields)

One form of an index is a file of entries <field value,

pointer to record>, which is ordered by field value

The index is called an access path on the field.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -13

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Indexes as Access Paths (contd.)
The index file usually occupies considerably less disk
blocks than the data file because its entries are much
smaller
A binary search on the index yields a pointer to the
file record
Indexes can also be characterized as dense or sparse.
A dense index has an index entry for every
search key value (and hence every record) in the
data file.
A sparse (or nondense) index, on the other
hand, has index entries for only some of the
search values

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -14

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Indexes as Access Paths (contd.)
Example: Given the following data file:
EMPLOYEE(NAME, SSN, ADDRESS, JOB, SAL, ... )
Suppose that:
record size R=150 bytes
block size B=512 bytes
r=30000 records
Then, we get:
blocking factor Bfr= B div R= 512 div 150= 3 records/block
number of file blocks b= (r/Bfr)= (30000/3)= 10000 blocks

For an index on the SSN field, assume the field size V SSN=9 bytes,
assume the record pointer size PR=7 bytes. Then:
index entry size RI=(VSSN+ PR)=(9+7)=16 bytes
index blocking factor BfrI= B div RI= 512 div 16= 32 entries/block
number of index blocks b= (r/ BfrI)= (30000/32)= 938 blocks
binary search needs log2bI= log2938= 10 block accesses
This is compared to an average linear search cost of:
(b/2)= 30000/2= 15000 block accesses
If the file records are ordered, the binary search cost would be:
log2b= log230000= 15 block accesses
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -15
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Types of Single-Level Indexes

Primary Index
– Defined on an ordered data file
– The data file is ordered on a key field
– Includes one index entry for each block in the data file; the
index entry has the key field value for the first record in the
block, which is called the block anchor
– A similar scheme can use the last record in a block.
– A primary index is a nondense (sparse) index, since it
includes an entry for each disk block of the data file and the
keys of its anchor record rather than for every search value.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -16

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -17
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Types of Single-Level Indexes

Clustering Index
– Defined on an ordered data file
– The data file is ordered on a non-key field unlike primary
index, which requires that the ordering field of the data file
have a distinct value for each record.
– Includes one index entry for each distinct value of the field;
the index entry points to the first data block that contains
records with that field value.
– It is another example of nondense index where Insertion and
Deletion is relatively straightforward with a clustering index.
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -18
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -19
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -20
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Types of Single-Level Indexes
Secondary Index
– A secondary index provides a secondary means of accessing a
file for which some primary access already exists.
– The secondary index may be on a field which is a candidate key
and has a unique value in every record, or a nonkey with
duplicate values.
– The index is an ordered file with two fields.
 The first field is of the same data type as some nonordering
field of the data file that is an indexing field.
 The second field is either a block pointer or a record
pointer. There can be many secondary indexes (and hence,
indexing fields) for the same file.
– Includes one entry for each record in the data file; hence, it is a
dense index
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -21
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
A dense secondary index (with
block pointers) on a
nonordering key field of a file.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -22

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
A secondary index (with recored pointers) on a
nonkey field implemented using one level of
indirection so that index entries are of fixed
length and have unique field values.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -23

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -24
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Multi-Level Indexes
Because a single-level index is an ordered file, we can
create a primary index to the index itself ; in this case,
the original index file is called the first-level index and
the index to the index is called the second-level index.
We can repeat the process, creating a third, fourth, ...,
top level until all entries of the top level fit in one disk
block
A multi-level index can be created for any type of first-
level index (primary, secondary, clustering) as long as
the first-level index consists of more than one disk
block

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -25

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 A two-level primary index
resembling ISAM (Indexed
Sequential Access Method)
organization

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -26

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Dynamic Multi-Level Indexes
To retain the benefits of using multilevel indexing
while reducing index insertion and deletion problems
Leaves some space in each of its blocks for inserting
new entries and uses appropriate insertion/deletion
algorithms for creating and deleting new index blocks
when the data file grows and shrinks.
 Often implemented by using data structures called B-
trees and B+-trees

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -27

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Search Tree
A search tree of order p is a tree such that each node
contains at most p − 1 search values and p pointers in the
order <P1, K1, P2, K2, ..., Pq−1, Kq−1, Pq>, where q ≤ p.
Each Pi is a pointer to a child node (or a NULL pointer),
and each Ki is a search value from some ordered set of
values. All search values are assumed to be unique

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -28

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 A search tree of order p = 3.

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -29

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees
and B+-Trees
Because of the insertion and deletion problem, most
multi-level indexes use B-tree or B+-tree data
structures, which leave space in each tree node (disk
block) to allow for new index entries
These data structures are variations of search trees that
allow efficient insertion and deletion of new search
values.
In B-Tree and B+-Tree data structures, each node
corresponds to a disk block
Each node is kept between half-full and completely full

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -30

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees
and B+-Trees (contd.)
An insertion into a node that is not full is quite
efficient; if a node is full the insertion causes a split
into two nodes
Splitting may propagate to other tree levels
A deletion is quite efficient if a node does not become
less than half full
If a deletion causes a node to become less than half
full, it must be merged with neighboring nodes

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -31

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Difference between B-tree and B+-tree

 In a B-tree, pointers to data records exist at all levels

of the tree
 In a B+-tree, all pointers to data records exists at the
leaf-level nodes
 A B+-tree can have less levels (or higher capacity of
search values) than the corresponding B-tree

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -32

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -33
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -34
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Indexes on Multiple Keys
Ordered Index on Multiple Attributes
– Create a index on a search key field that is a combination of
multiple attributes
– A lexicographic ordering of these tuple values establishes an
order on this composite search key
Partitioned Hashing
– For a key consisting of n components, the hash function is
designed to produce a result with n separate hash addresses
Grid Files
– Construct a grid array with one linear scale (or dimension) for
each of the search attributes

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -35

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -36
Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe
 Other Types of Indexes

Hash Indexes
Bitmap Indexes
Function based Indexing

(at home !!!)

Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition Slide 9 -37

Copyright © 2004 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe