Database II

Lecture 2

Disk Storage and Basic File

Structures

Dr. Doaa Elzanfaly

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe
 Introduction
◼ Databases are stored on disks and accessed according to:
◼ Physical database file structures (Physical levels of three schema architecture)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Introduction

◼ Storage hierarchy
◼ Primary storage
◼ CPU main memory, cache memory
◼ Secondary storage
◼ Magnetic disks, flash memory, solid-state drives
◼ Tertiary storage
◼ Removable media

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

 Storage Hierarchy

◼ Offline storage, archiving databases (larger capacity, less cost, slower

access, not directly accessible by CPU)
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe
Memory Hierarchies and Storage
Devices
◼ Cache memory
◼ Static RAM
◼ DRAM
◼ Mass storage
◼ Magnetic disks
◼ CD-ROM, DVD, tape drives
◼ Flash memory
◼ Nonvolatile

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Memory Hierarchies and Storage
Devices

◼ Depending upon the intended use and application

requirements, data is kept in one or more levels
of hierarchy.
◼ Programs are in main memory (DRAM)
◼ Permanent databases reside in secondary storage
◼ Main memory buffers are used to read and write to
secondary storage

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Storage Types and Characteristics

Table 16.1 Types of Storage with Capacity, Access Time,

Max Bandwidth (Transfer Speed), and Commodity Cost

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Storage Organization of Databases
◼ Persistent data
◼ Most databases
◼ Transient data
◼ Exists only during program execution
◼ File organization
◼ Determines how records are physically placed on
the disk
◼ Determines how records are accessed

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Secondary Storage Devices
◼ Hard disk drive
◼ Bits (ones and zeros)
◼ Grouped into bytes or characters
◼ Disk capacity measures storage size
◼ Disks may be single or double-sided
◼ Concentric circles called tracks
◼ Tracks divided into blocks or sectors
◼ Disk packs
◼ Cylinder

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Single-Sided Disk and Disk Pack

Figure 16.1 (a) A single-sided disk with read/write hardware

(b) A disk pack with read/write hardware
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe
Sectors on a Disk

Figure 16.2 Different sector organizations on disk (a) Sectors subtending

a fixed angle (b) Sectors maintaining a uniform recording density

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Secondary Storage Devices (cont’d.)

◼ Formatting
◼ Divides tracks into
equal-sized disk blocks
◼ Blocks separated by
interblock gaps
◼ Data transfer in units of
disk blocks
◼ Hardware address
supplied to disk I/O
hardware

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Buffering
◼ A buffer
◼ Is a contiguous reserved area in the memory
available for storage of copies of disk blocks to
speed up the processes.
◼ For a read command
◼ The block is copied from disk into the buffer
◼ For write command
◼ The contents of the buffer are to be written to the
disk.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Accessing Data Through Buffer

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Buffer Management
◼ Programs call the buffer manager when they
need a block from disk.
◼ If the block is already in the buffer
◼ The requesting program is given the address of the
block in main memory
◼ If the block in not in the buffer
◼ The buffer manager allocates space in the buffer to
read the required block from the disk and passes
the address to the requester.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Buffer Replacement Strategies
◼ To free space in the buffer for the new required blocks,
the buffer manager uses on of the following replacement
strategies
◼ Least recently used (LRU)

◼ Clock policy

◼ First-in-first-out (FIFO)

◼ The replaced blocks are written back to disk if they were

modified.
◼ The placement policy has an impact on the number of
I/Os depending on the access patterns.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

File Organization
◼ A database is stored as a collection of files.
◼ Each file is a sequence of records.
◼ A record is a sequence of fields.
◼ Records are stored on desk block.
◼ A file can have a Fixed-length records or
variable-length records

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

File Organization
◼ Reasons for variable-length records
◼ One or more fields have variable length
◼ One or more fields are repeating
◼ One or more fields are optional
◼ File contains records of different types

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Record Blocking and Spanned
Versus Unspanned Records
◼ File records allocated to disk blocks
◼ Spanned records
◼ Larger than a single block
◼ Pointer at end of first block points to block
containing remainder of record
◼ Unspanned
◼ Records not allowed to cross block boundaries

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Record Blocking and Spanned
Versus Unspanned Records
◼ Blocking factor
◼ Average number of records per block for the file

Figure 16.6 Types of record organization (a) Unspanned (b) Spanned

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Operations on Files
◼ Examples of operations for accessing file records
◼ Open
◼ Find
◼ Read
◼ FindNext
◼ Delete
◼ Insert
◼ Close
◼ Scan

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Organization of Records in Files

◼ Heap/unordered File Organization

◼ Ordered File Organization
◼ Hashed File Organization

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Files of Unordered Records (Heap Files)

◼ Heap (or pile) file

◼ Records placed in file in order of insertion
◼ Inserting a new record is very efficient
◼ Searching for a record requires linear search
◼ Deletion techniques
◼ Rewrite the block
◼ Use deletion marker

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Files of Ordered Records (Sorted Files)

◼ Ordered (sequential) file

◼ Records sorted by ordering field
◼ Called ordering key if ordering field is a key field
◼ Advantages
◼ Reading records in order of ordering key value is
extremely efficient
◼ Finding next record
◼ Binary search technique

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Access Times for Various File
Organizations

Table 16.3 Average access times for a file of b

blocks under basic file organizations

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Hashing Techniques
◼ Hash function (randomizing function)
◼ Applied to hash field value of a record
◼ Yields address of the disk block of stored record
◼ Organization called hash file
◼ Search condition is equality condition on the hash
field
◼ Hash field typically key field
◼ Hashing also internal search structure
◼ Used when group of records accessed exclusively
by one field value
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe
Hashing Techniques
◼ Collision occur when a new record hashes to a
bucket that is already full.
◼ Collision resolution
◼ Progressive Overflow (Open Addressing)

◼ Chaining
◼ Multiple hashing

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Progressive Overflow
◼ Proceed from the occupied position specified by the hash
address, checks the subsequent positions in order until an
unused (empty) position is found.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Chaining Progressive Overflow
◼ Various overflow locations are kept, and a collision is resolved by
placing the new record in an unused overflow location and setting the
pointer of the occupied hash address location to the address of that
overflow location.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe
Multiple Hashing
◼ The first hash function determine the home address.
◼ If the home address is occupied, apply a second hash function to get
a number c.
◼ c is added to the home address to produce an overflow addresses; if
occupied, proceed by adding c to the overflow address until an empty
spot is found.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Hashing Techniques
◼ External hashing for disk files
◼ Target address space made of buckets
◼ Bucket: one disk block or contiguous blocks
◼ Hashing function maps a key into relative bucket
◼ Table in file header converts bucket number to
disk block address
◼ Collision problem less severe with buckets
◼ Static hashing
◼ Fixed number of buckets allocated

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

 SELF-STUDY PART

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Parallelizing Disk Access Using RAID
Technology
◼ Redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID)
◼ Goal: improve disk speed and access time
◼ Set of RAID architectures (0 through 6)
◼ Data striping
◼ Bit-level striping
◼ Block-level striping
◼ Improving Performance with RAID
◼ Data striping achieves higher transfer rates

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Parallelizing Disk Access Using RAID
Technology
◼ Improving reliability with RAID
◼ Redundancy techniques: mirroring and shadowing
◼ RAID organizations and levels
◼ Level 0
◼ Data striping, no redundant data
◼ Spits data evenly across two or more disks
◼ Level 1
◼ Uses mirrored disks

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Parallelizing Disk Access Using RAID
Technology
◼ RAID organizations and levels (cont’d.)
◼ Level 2
◼ Hamming codes for memory-style redundancy
◼ Error detection and correction
◼ Level 3
◼ Single parity disk relying on disk controller
◼ Levels 4 and 5
◼ Block-level data striping
◼ Data distribution across all disks (level 5)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Parallelizing Disk Access Using RAID
Technology
◼ RAID organizations and levels (cont’d.)
◼ Level 6
◼ Applies P+Q redundancy scheme
◼ Protects against up to two disk failures by using just
two redundant disks
◼ Rebuilding easiest for RAID level 1
◼ Other levels require reconstruction by reading
multiple disks
◼ RAID levels 3 and 5 preferred for large volume
storage

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

RAID Levels

Figure 16.14 Some popular levels of RAID (a) RAID level 1: Mirroring of data on
two disks (b) RAID level 5: Striping of data with distributed parity across four disks

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Modern Storage Architectures
◼ Storage area networks
◼ Online storage peripherals configured as nodes on
high-speed network
◼ Network-attached storage
◼ Servers used for file sharing
◼ High degree of scalability, reliability, flexibility,
performance.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe