Chapter 8: Data Storage, Indexing Structures for Files Overview of Database Design Process 2 Outline Data Storage • Disk Storage Devices • Files of Records • Operations on Files • Unordered Files • Ordered Files • Hashed Files • RAID Technology Indexing Structures for Files • Types of Single-level Ordered Indexes • Multilevel Indexes • Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees and B+-Trees • Indexes on Multiple Keys 3 Disk Storage Devices 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 or more 4 Disk Storage Devices (contd.) A track is divided into smaller blocks or sectors • because it usually contains a large amount of information 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.
5 Disk Storage Devices (contd.) 6 Disk Storage Devices (contd.) 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 (imaginary collection of tracks of same radius from all recorded 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. 7 Disk Storage Devices (contd.) 8 Records Fixed and variable length records Records contain fields which have values of a particular type • E., 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.” 9 Blocking Blocking: • Refers to storing a number of records in one block 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: • Refers to records that exceed the size of one or more blocks and hence span a number of blocks. 10 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. 11 Files of Records (contd.) File records can be unspanned or spanned • Unspanned: no record can span two blocks • 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. 12 Operation on Files Typical file operations include: • OPEN: Readies the file for access, and associates a pointer that will refer to a current file record at each point in time.
• FIND: Searches for the first file record that satisfies a certain condition, and makes it the current file record. • FINDNEXT: Searches for the next file record (from the current record) that satisfies a certain condition, and makes it the current file record. • READ: Reads the current file record into a program variable. • INSERT: Inserts a new record into the file & makes it the current file record.
• DELETE: Removes the current file record from the file, usually by marking the record to indicate that it is no longer valid. • MODIFY: Changes the values of some fields of the current file record. • CLOSE: Terminates access to the file. • REORGANIZE: Reorganizes the file records.
• For example, the records marked deleted are physically removed from the file or a new organization of the file records is created. • READ_ORDERED: Read the file blocks in order of a specific field of the file. 13 Unordered Files Also called a heap or a pile file. New records are inserted at the end of the file.
A linear search through the file records is necessary to search for a record. • This requires reading and searching half the file blocks on the average, and is hence quite expensive. Record insertion is quite efficient. Reading the records in order of a particular field requires sorting the file records.
14 Ordered Files Also called a sequential file. File records are kept sorted by the values of an ordering field. Insertion is expensive: records must be inserted in the correct order. • It is common to keep a separate unordered overflow (or transaction) file for new records to improve insertion efficiency; this is periodically merged with the main ordered file.
A binary search can be used to search for a record on its ordering field value. • This requires reading and searching log2 of the file blocks on the average, an improvement over linear search. Reading the records in order of the ordering field is quite efficient. 15 Ordered Files (contd.) 16 Average Access Times The following table shows the average access time to access a specific record for a given type of file 17 Hashed Files Hashing for disk files is called External Hashing The file blocks are divided into M equal-sized buckets, numbered bucket0, bucket1,.
• Typically, a bucket corresponds to one (or a fixed number of) disk block. One of the file fields is designated to be the hash key of the file. The record with hash key value K is stored in bucket i, where i=h(K), and h is the hashing function. Search is very efficient on the hash key.
Collisions occur when a new record hashes to a bucket that is already full. • An overflow file is kept for storing such records. • Overflow records that hash to each bucket can be linked together. 18 Hashed Files (contd.) 19 Hashed Files (contd.) To reduce overflow records, a hash file is typically kept 70-80% full.
The hash function h should distribute the records uniformly among the buckets • Otherwise, search time will be increased because many overflow records will exist. Main disadvantages of static external hashing: • Fixed number of buckets M is a problem if the number of records in the file grows or shrinks. • Ordered access on the hash key is quite inefficient (requires sorting the records). 20 Hashed Files - Overflow handling 21 Parallelizing Disk Access using RAID Technology.
Secondary storage technology must take steps to keep up in performance and reliability with processor technology. A major advance in secondary storage technology is represented by the development of RAID, which originally stood for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks. The main goal of RAID is to even out the widely different rates of performance improvement of disks against those in memory and microprocessors. 22 RAID Technology (contd.) A natural solution is a large array of small independent disks acting as a single higher- performance logical disk.
A concept called data striping is used, which utilizes parallelism to improve disk performance. Data striping distributes data transparently over multiple disks to make them appear as a single large, fast disk. 23 Use of RAID Technology (contd.) 24 Storage Area Networks The demand for higher storage has risen considerably in recent times. Organizations have a need to move from a static fixed data center oriented operation to a more flexible and dynamic infrastructure for information processing.
Thus they are moving to a concept of Storage Area Networks (SANs). • In a SAN, online storage peripherals are configured as nodes on a high-speed network and can be attached and detached from servers in a very flexible manner. This allows storage systems to be placed at longer distances from the servers and provide different performance and connectivity options. 25 Storage Area Networks (contd.) Advantages of SANs are: • Flexible many-to-many connectivity among servers and storage devices using fiber channel hubs and switches.
• Up to 10km separation between a server and a storage system using appropriate fiber optic cables. • Better isolation capabilities allowing non-disruptive addition of new peripherals and servers. SANs face the problem of combining storage options from multiple vendors and dealing with evolving standards of storage management software and hardware. 26 Outline Disk Storage, Basic File Structures, and Hashing • Disk Storage Devices • Files of Records • Operations on Files • Unordered Files • Ordered Files • Hashed Files • RAID Technology Indexing Structures for Files • Types of Single-level Ordered Indexes • Multilevel Indexes • Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees and B+-Trees • Indexes on Multiple Keys 27 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. 28 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 29 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.
30 Primary index on the ordering key field 31 Types of Single-Level Indexes Example: Given the following data file: EMPLOYEE(NAME,SSN, ADDRESS,JOB,SAL,.