Chapter 12: Indexing and Hashing

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Chapter 12: Indexing and Hashing
 Basic Concepts
 Ordered Indices
 B+-Tree Index Files
 B-Tree Index Files
 Static Hashing
 Dynamic Hashing
 Comparison of Ordered Indexing and Hashing
 Index Definition in SQL
 Multiple-Key Access

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.2 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.3 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dense Index Files
 Dense index — Index record appears for every search-key value in
the file.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.5 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.6 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.7 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.9 ©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 deletion:
 Dense indices – deletion of search-key: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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.10 ©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 (as well as deletion) algorithms are simple
extensions of the single-level algorithms

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.11 ©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 account relation stored sequentially by
account number, we may want to find all accounts in a particular
branch
 Example 2: as above, but where we want to find all accounts
with a specified balance or range of balances
 We can have a secondary index with an index record for each
search-key value

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Secondary Indices Example

Secondary index on balance field of account

 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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.13 ©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 micro seconds, versus about
100 nanoseconds for memory access

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.14 ©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 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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.15 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.16 ©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

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Leaf Nodes in B+-Trees
Properties of a leaf node:
 For i = 1, 2, . . ., n–1, pointer Pi either points to a file record with search-
key value Ki, or to a bucket of pointers to file records, each record
having search-key value Ki. Only need bucket structure if search-key
does not form a primary key.
 If Li, Lj are leaf nodes and i < j, Li’s search-key values are less than Lj’s
search-key values
 Pn points to next leaf node in search-key order

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.18 ©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

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 Example of a B+-tree

B+-tree for account file (n = 3)

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-tree

B+-tree for account file (n = 5)

 Leaf nodes must have between 2 and 4 values

((n–1)/2 and n –1, with n = 5).
 Non-leaf nodes other than root must have between 3 and 5
children ((n/2 and n with n =5).
 Root must have at least 2 children.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.21 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Queries on B+-Trees
 Find all records with a search-key value of k.
1. N=root
2. Repeat
1. Examine N for the smallest search-key value > k.
2. If such a value exists, assume it is Ki. Then set N = Pi
3. Otherwise k  Kn–1. Set N = Pn
Until N is a leaf node
3. If for some i, key Ki = k follow pointer Pi to the desired record or bucket.
4. Else no record with search-key value k exists.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.23 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.24 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.25 ©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 Brighton and Downtown on inserting Clearview

Next step: insert entry with (Downtown,pointer-to-new-node) into parent

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Updates on B+-Trees: Insertion (Cont.)

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

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Examples of B+-Tree Deletion

Before and after deleting “Downtown”

 Deleting “Downtown” causes merging of under-full leaves
 leaf node can become empty only for n=3!

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Examples of B+-Tree Deletion (Cont.)

Deletion of “Perryridge” from result of previous example

 Leaf with “Perryridge” becomes underfull (actually empty, in this special case) and
merged with its sibling.
 As a result “Perryridge” node’s parent became underfull, and was merged with its sibling
 Value separating two nodes (at parent) moves into merged node
 Entry deleted from parent
 Root node then has only one child, and is deleted

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-tree Deletion (Cont.)

Before and after deletion of “Perryridge” from earlier example

 Parent of leaf containing Perryridge became underfull, and borrowed a
pointer from its left sibling
 Search-key value in the parent’s parent changes as a result
Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.30 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.31 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.32 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 B-Tree Index File Example

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

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.34 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multiple-Key Access
 Use multiple indices for certain types of queries.
 Example:
select account_number
from account
where branch_name = “Perryridge” and balance = 1000
 Possible strategies for processing query using indices on single
attributes:
1. Use index on branch_name to find accounts with branch name
Perryridge; test balance = 1000
2. Use index on balance to find accounts with balances of $1000;
test branch_name = “Perryridge”.
3. Use branch_name index to find pointers to all records pertaining to
the Perryridge branch. Similarly use index on balance. Take
intersection of both sets of pointers obtained.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indices on Multiple Keys
 Composite search keys are search keys containing more than one
attribute
 E.g. (branch_name, balance)
 Lexicographic ordering: (a1, a2) < (b1, b2) if either
 a1 < b1, or
 a1=b1 and a2 < b2

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indices on Multiple Attributes

Suppose we have an index on combined search-key

(branch_name, balance).

 With the where clause

where branch_name = “Perryridge” and balance = 1000
the index on (branch_name, balance) can be used to fetch only
records that satisfy both conditions.
 Using separate indices in less efficient — we may fetch many
records (or pointers) that satisfy only one of the conditions.
 Can also efficiently handle
where branch_name = “Perryridge” and balance < 1000
 But cannot efficiently handle
where branch_name < “Perryridge” and balance = 1000
 May fetch many records that satisfy the first but not the second
condition

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hashing

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed.

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

 A bucket is a unit of storage containing one or more records (a

bucket is typically a disk block).
 In a hash file organization we obtain the bucket of a record directly
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 records for access, insertion as well
as deletion.
 Records with different search-key values may be mapped to the
same bucket; thus entire bucket has to be searched sequentially to
locate a record.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash File Organization

Hash file organization of account file, using branch_name as key

(See figure in next slide.)

 There are 10 buckets,

 The binary representation of the ith 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(Perryridge) = 5 h(Round Hill) = 3 h(Brighton) = 3

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash File Organization

Hash file organization

of account file, using
branch_name as key
(see previous slide for
details).

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash Functions
 Worst hash function maps all search-key values to the same bucket;
this makes access time proportional to the number of search-key values
in the file.
 An ideal hash function is uniform, i.e., each bucket is assigned the
same number of search-key values from the set of all possible values.
 Ideal hash function is random, so each bucket will have the same
number of records assigned to it irrespective of the actual distribution of
search-key values in the file.
 Typical hash functions perform computation on the internal binary
representation of the search-key.
 For example, for a string search-key, the binary representations of
all the characters in the string could be added and the sum modulo
the number of buckets could be returned. .

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.43 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling of Bucket Overflows (Cont.)

 Overflow chaining – the overflow buckets of a given bucket are chained

together in a linked list.
 Above scheme is called closed hashing.
 An alternative, called open hashing, which does not use overflow
buckets, is not suitable for database applications.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash Indices
 Hashing can be used not only for file organization, but also for index-
structure creation.
 A hash index organizes the search keys, with their associated record
pointers, into a hash file structure.
 Strictly speaking, hash indices are always secondary indices
 if the file itself is organized using hashing, a separate primary hash
index on it using the same search-key is unnecessary.
 However, we use the term hash index to refer to both secondary
index structures and hash organized files.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash Index

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.47 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Dynamic Hashing
 Good for database that grows and shrinks in size
 Allows the hash function to be modified dynamically
 Extendable hashing – one form of dynamic hashing
 Hash function generates values over a large range — typically b-bit
integers, with b = 32.
 At any time use only a prefix of the hash function to index into a
table of bucket addresses.
 Let the length of the prefix be i bits, 0  i  32.
 Bucket address table size = 2i. Initially i = 0
 Value of i grows and shrinks as the size of the database grows
and shrinks.
 Multiple entries in the bucket address table may point to a bucket
(why?)
 Thus, actual number of buckets is < 2i
 The number of buckets also changes dynamically due to
coalescing and splitting of buckets.

Database System Concepts - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.49 ©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 - 5th Edition, Oct 4, 2006 12.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan