Storage and File Structure

Indexing and Hashing

Query Processing and Optimization
Transactions

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Classification of Physical Storage Media

Speed with which data can be accessed

Cost per unit of data
Reliability
data loss on power failure or system crash
physical failure of the storage device
Can differentiate storage into:
volatile storage: loses contents when power is switched off
non-volatile storage:
 Contents persist even when power is switched off.
 Includes secondary and tertiary storage, as well as batter-
backed up main-memory.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Physical Storage Media

Cache – fastest and most costly form of storage; volatile; managed

by the computer system hardware.
Main memory:
fast access (10s to 100s of nanoseconds; 1 nanosecond = 10–9
seconds)
generally too small (or too expensive) to store the entire
database
 capacities of up to a few Gigabytes widely used currently
 Capacities have gone up and per-byte costs have
decreased steadily and rapidly (roughly factor of 2 every 2
to 3 years)
Volatile — contents of main memory are usually lost if a power
failure or system crash occurs.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Physical Storage Media (Cont.)
Flash memory
Data survives power failure
Data can be written at a location only once, but location can be
erased and written to again
 Can support only a limited number (10K – 1M) of write/erase
cycles.
 Erasing of memory has to be done to an entire bank of
memory
Reads are roughly as fast as main memory
But writes are slow (few microseconds), erase is slower
Widely used in embedded devices such as digital cameras,
phones, and USB keys

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Physical Storage Media (Cont.)

Magnetic-disk
Data is stored on spinning disk, and read/written magnetically
Primary medium for the long-term storage of data; typically stores entire
database.
Data must be moved from disk to main memory for access, and written
back for storage
 Much slower access than main memory (more on this later)
direct-access – possible to read data on disk in any order, unlike
magnetic tape
Capacities range up to roughly 1.5 TB as of 2009
 Much larger capacity and cost/byte than main memory/flash memory
 Growing constantly and rapidly with technology improvements (factor
of 2 to 3 every 2 years)
Survives power failures and system crashes
 disk failure can destroy data, but is rare

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Physical Storage Media (Cont.)
Optical storage
non-volatile, data is read optically from a spinning disk using
a laser
CD-ROM (640 MB) and DVD (4.7 to 17 GB) most popular
forms
Blu-ray disks: 27 GB to 54 GB
Write-one, read-many (WORM) optical disks used for archival
storage (CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R)
Multiple write versions also available (CD-RW, DVD-RW,
DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM)
Reads and writes are slower than with magnetic disk
Juke-box systems, with large numbers of removable disks, a
few drives, and a mechanism for automatic loading/unloading
of disks available for storing large volumes of data

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Physical Storage Media (Cont.)
Tape storage
non-volatile, used primarily for backup (to recover from disk
failure), and for archival data
sequential-access – much slower than disk
very high capacity (40 to 300 GB tapes available)
tape can be removed from drive  storage costs much
cheaper than disk, but drives are expensive
Tape jukeboxes available for storing massive amounts of
data
 hundreds of terabytes (1 terabyte = 109 bytes) to even
multiple petabytes (1 petabyte = 1012 bytes)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Storage Hierarchy

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Storage Hierarchy (Cont.)

primary storage: Fastest media but volatile (cache, main

memory).
secondary storage: next level in hierarchy, non-volatile,
moderately fast access time
also called on-line storage
E.g. flash memory, magnetic disks
tertiary storage: lowest level in hierarchy, non-volatile, slow
access time
also called off-line storage
E.g. magnetic tape, optical storage

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Magnetic Hard Disk Mechanism

NOTE: Diagram is schematic, and simplifies the structure of actual disk drives

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Magnetic Disks
Read-write head
Positioned very close to the platter surface (almost touching it)
Reads or writes magnetically encoded information.
Surface of platter divided into circular tracks
Over 50K-100K tracks per platter on typical hard disks
Each track is divided into sectors.
A sector is the smallest unit of data that can be read or written.
Sector size typically 512 bytes
Typical sectors per track: 500 to 1000 (on inner tracks) to 1000 to 2000 (on
outer tracks)
To read/write a sector
disk arm swings to position head on right track
platter spins continually; data is read/written as sector passes under head
Head-disk assemblies
multiple disk platters on a single spindle (1 to 5 usually)
one head per platter, mounted on a common arm.
Cylinder i consists of ith track of all the platters

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Magnetic Disks (Cont.)

Earlier generation disks were susceptible to head-crashes

Surface of earlier generation disks had metal-oxide coatings which
would disintegrate on head crash and damage all data on disk
Current generation disks are less susceptible to such disastrous
failures, although individual sectors may get corrupted
Disk controller – interfaces between the computer system and the disk
drive hardware.
accepts high-level commands to read or write a sector
initiates actions such as moving the disk arm to the right track and
actually reading or writing the data
Computes and attaches checksums to each sector to verify that
data is read back correctly
 If data is corrupted, with very high probability stored checksum
won’t match recomputed checksum
Ensures successful writing by reading back sector after writing it
Performs remapping of bad sectors

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Performance Measures of Disks
Access time – the time it takes from when a read or write request is issued to
when data transfer begins. Consists of:
Seek time – time it takes to reposition the arm over the correct track.
 Average seek time is 1/2 the worst case seek time.
– Would be 1/3 if all tracks had the same number of sectors, and we
ignore the time to start and stop arm movement
 4 to 10 milliseconds on typical disks
Rotational latency – time it takes for the sector to be accessed to appear
under the head.
 Average latency is 1/2 of the worst case latency.
 4 to 11 milliseconds on typical disks (5400 to 15000 r.p.m.)
Data-transfer rate – the rate at which data can be retrieved from or stored to
the disk.
25 to 100 MB per second max rate, lower for inner tracks
Multiple disks may share a controller, so rate that controller can handle is
also important
 E.g. SATA: 150 MB/sec, SATA-II 3Gb (300 MB/sec)
 Ultra 320 SCSI: 320 MB/s, SAS (3 to 6 Gb/sec)
 Fiber Channel (FC2Gb or 4Gb): 256 to 512 MB/s

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Performance Measures (Cont.)

Mean time to failure (MTTF) – the average time the disk is

expected to run continuously without any failure.
Typically 3 to 5 years
Probability of failure of new disks is quite low, corresponding to a
“theoretical MTTF” of 500,000 to 1,200,000 hours for a new disk
 E.g., an MTTF of 1,200,000 hours for a new disk means that
given 1000 relatively new disks, on an average one will fail
every 1200 hours
MTTF decreases as disk ages

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Optimization of Disk-Block Access
Block – a contiguous sequence of sectors from a single track
data is transferred between disk and main memory in blocks
sizes range from 512 bytes to several kilobytes
 Smaller blocks: more transfers from disk
 Larger blocks: more space wasted due to partially filled blocks
 Typical block sizes today range from 4 to 16 kilobytes
Disk-arm-scheduling algorithms order pending accesses to tracks so
that disk arm movement is minimized
elevator algorithm:

R6 R3 R1 R5 R2 R4

Inner track Outer track

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Optimization of Disk Block Access (Cont.)

File organization – optimize block access time by organizing the

blocks to correspond to how data will be accessed
E.g. Store related information on the same or nearby cylinders.
Files may get fragmented over time
 E.g. if data is inserted to/deleted from the file
 Or free blocks on disk are scattered, and newly created file
has its blocks scattered over the disk
 Sequential access to a fragmented file results in increased
disk arm movement
Some systems have utilities to defragment the file system, in
order to speed up file access

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Optimization of Disk Block Access (Cont.)

Nonvolatile write buffers speed up disk writes by writing blocks to a non-volatile

RAM buffer immediately
Non-volatile RAM: battery backed up RAM or flash memory
 Even if power fails, the data is safe and will be written to disk when power
returns
Controller then writes to disk whenever the disk has no other requests or
request has been pending for some time
Database operations that require data to be safely stored before continuing can
continue without waiting for data to be written to disk
Writes can be reordered to minimize disk arm movement
Log disk – a disk devoted to writing a sequential log of block updates
Used exactly like nonvolatile RAM
 Write to log disk is very fast since no seeks are required
 No need for special hardware (NV-RAM)
File systems typically reorder writes to disk to improve performance
Journaling file systems write data in safe order to NV-RAM or log disk
Reordering without journaling: risk of corruption of file system data

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Flash Storage
used widely for storage
requires page-at-a-time read (page: 512 bytes to 4 KB)
transfer rate around 20 MB/sec
solid state disks: use multiple flash storage devices to provide
higher transfer rate of 100 to 200 MB/sec
erase is very slow (1 to 2 millisecs)
 erase block contains multiple pages
 after 100,000 to 1,000,000 erases, erase block becomes
unreliable and cannot be used

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID
RAID: Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks
disk organization techniques that manage a large numbers of disks,
providing a view of a single disk of
 high capacity and high speed by using multiple disks in parallel,
 high reliability by storing data redundantly, so that data can be
recovered even if a disk fails
The chance that some disk out of a set of N disks will fail is much higher than
the chance that a specific single disk will fail.
E.g., a system with 100 disks, each with MTTF of 100,000 hours (approx.
11 years), will have a system MTTF of 1000 hours (approx. 41 days)
Techniques for using redundancy to avoid data loss are critical with large
numbers of disks
Originally a cost-effective alternative to large, expensive disks
I in RAID originally stood for ``inexpensive’’
Today RAIDs are used for their higher reliability and bandwidth.
 The “I” is interpreted as independent
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Improvement of Reliability via Redundancy

Redundancy – store extra information that can be used to rebuild

information lost in a disk failure
E.g., Mirroring (or shadowing)
Duplicate every disk. Logical disk consists of two physical disks.
Every write is carried out on both disks
 Reads can take place from either disk
If one disk in a pair fails, data still available in the other
 Data loss would occur only if a disk fails, and its mirror disk
also fails before the system is repaired
– Probability of combined event is very small
» Except for dependent failure modes such as fire or
building collapse or electrical power surges

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Improvement in Performance via Parallelism

Two main goals of parallelism in a disk system:

1. Load balance multiple small accesses to increase throughput
2. Parallelize large accesses to reduce response time.
Improve transfer rate by striping data across multiple disks.
Bit-level striping – split the bits of each byte across multiple disks
In an array of eight disks, write bit i of each byte to disk i.
Each access can read data at eight times the rate of a single disk.
But seek/access time worse than for a single disk
 Bit level striping is not used much any more
Block-level striping – with n disks, block i of a file goes to disk (i
mod n) + 1
Requests for different blocks can run in parallel if the blocks
reside on different disks
A request for a long sequence of blocks can utilize all disks in
parallel
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID Levels
Schemes to provide redundancy at lower cost by using disk
striping combined with parity bits
Different RAID organizations, or RAID levels, have differing
cost, performance and reliability characteristics
RAID Level 0: Block striping; non-redundant.
Used in high-performance applications where data loss is not critical.
RAID Level 1: Mirrored disks with block striping
Offers best write performance.
Popular for applications such as storing log files in a database system.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID Levels (Cont.)
RAID Level 2: Memory-Style Error-Correcting-Codes (ECC) with bit
striping.
RAID Level 3: Bit-Interleaved Parity
a single parity bit is enough for error correction, not just
detection, since we know which disk has failed
 When writing data, corresponding parity bits must also be
computed and written to a parity bit disk
 To recover data in a damaged disk, compute XOR of bits
from other disks (including parity bit disk)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID Levels (Cont.)
RAID Level 3 (Cont.)
Faster data transfer than with a single disk, but fewer I/Os per
second since every disk has to participate in every I/O.
Subsumes Level 2 (provides all its benefits, at lower cost).
RAID Level 4: Block-Interleaved Parity; uses block-level striping,
and keeps a parity block on a separate disk for corresponding
blocks from N other disks.
When writing data block, corresponding block of parity bits must
also be computed and written to parity disk
To find value of a damaged block, compute XOR of bits from
corresponding blocks (including parity block) from other disks.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID Levels (Cont.)
RAID Level 4 (Cont.)
Provides higher I/O rates for independent block reads than Level 3
 block read goes to a single disk, so blocks stored on different
disks can be read in parallel
Provides high transfer rates for reads of multiple blocks than no-
striping
Before writing a block, parity data must be computed
 Can be done by using old parity block, old value of current block
and new value of current block (2 block reads + 2 block writes)
 Or by recomputing the parity value using the new values of
blocks corresponding to the parity block
– More efficient for writing large amounts of data sequentially
Parity block becomes a bottleneck for independent block writes
since every block write also writes to parity disk

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID Levels (Cont.)
RAID Level 5: Block-Interleaved Distributed Parity; partitions data and
parity among all N + 1 disks, rather than storing data in N disks and
parity in 1 disk.
E.g., with 5 disks, parity block for nth set of blocks is stored on disk
(n mod 5) + 1, with the data blocks stored on the other 4 disks.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 RAID Levels (Cont.)
RAID Level 5 (Cont.)
Higher I/O rates than Level 4.
 Block writes occur in parallel if the blocks and their parity
blocks are on different disks.
Subsumes Level 4: provides same benefits, but avoids bottleneck
of parity disk.
RAID Level 6: P+Q Redundancy scheme; similar to Level 5, but
stores extra redundant information to guard against multiple disk
failures.
Better reliability than Level 5 at a higher cost; not used as widely.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Choice of RAID Level
Factors in choosing RAID level
Monetary cost
Performance: Number of I/O operations per second, and
bandwidth during normal operation
Performance during failure
Performance during rebuild of failed disk
Including time taken to rebuild failed disk

RAID 0 is used only when data safety is not important
E.g. data can be recovered quickly from other sources
Level 2 and 4 never used since they are subsumed by 3 and 5
Level 3 is not used anymore since bit-striping forces single block
reads to access all disks, wasting disk arm movement, which
block striping (level 5) avoids
Level 6 is rarely used since levels 1 and 5 offer adequate safety
for most applications

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Choice of RAID Level (Cont.)
Level 1 provides much better write performance than level 5
Level 5 requires at least 2 block reads and 2 block writes to write
a single block, whereas Level 1 only requires 2 block writes
Level 1 preferred for high update environments such as log disks
Level 1 had higher storage cost than level 5
disk drive capacities increasing rapidly (50%/year) whereas disk
access times have decreased much less (x 3 in 10 years)
I/O requirements have increased greatly, e.g. for Web servers
When enough disks have been bought to satisfy required rate of
I/O, they often have spare storage capacity
 so there is often no extra monetary cost for Level 1!
Level 5 is preferred for applications with low update rate,
and large amounts of data
Level 1 is preferred for all other applications

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Optical Disks
Compact disk-read only memory (CD-ROM)
Removable disks, 640 MB per disk
Seek time about 100 msec (optical read head is heavier and slower)
Higher latency (3000 RPM) and lower data-transfer rates (3-6 MB/s)
compared to magnetic disks
Digital Video Disk (DVD)
DVD-5 holds 4.7 GB , and DVD-9 holds 8.5 GB
DVD-10 and DVD-18 are double sided formats with capacities of 9.4
GB and 17 GB
Blu-ray DVD: 27 GB (54 GB for double sided disk)
Slow seek time, for same reasons as CD-ROM
Record once versions (CD-R and DVD-R) are popular
data can only be written once, and cannot be erased.
high capacity and long lifetime; used for archival storage
Multi-write versions (CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM)
also available

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Magnetic Tapes

Hold large volumes of data and provide high transfer rates

Few GB for DAT (Digital Audio Tape) format, 10-40 GB with DLT
(Digital Linear Tape) format, 100 GB+ with Ultrium format, and
330 GB with Ampex helical scan format
Transfer rates from few to 10s of MB/s
Tapes are cheap, but cost of drives is very high
Very slow access time in comparison to magnetic and optical disks
limited to sequential access.
Some formats (Accelis) provide faster seek (10s of seconds) at
cost of lower capacity
Used mainly for backup, for storage of infrequently used information,
and as an off-line medium for transferring information from one
system to another.
Tape jukeboxes used for very large capacity storage
Multiple petabyes (1015 bytes)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 File Organization, Record Organization
and Storage Access

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 File Organization

The database is stored as a collection of files. Each file is a

sequence of records. A record is a sequence of fields.
One approach:
assume record size is fixed
each file has records of one particular type only
different files are used for different relations
This case is easiest to implement; will consider variable length
records later.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Fixed-Length Records
Simple approach:
Store record i starting from byte n  (i – 1), where n is the size of
each record.
Record access is simple but records may cross blocks
 Modification: do not allow records to cross block boundaries

Deletion of record i:
alternatives:
move records i + 1, . . ., n
to i, . . . , n – 1
move record n to i
do not move records, but
link all free records on a
free list

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deleting record 3 and compacting

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deleting record 3 and moving last record

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Free Lists
Store the address of the first deleted record in the file header.
Use this first record to store the address of the second deleted record,
and so on
Can think of these stored addresses as pointers since they “point” to
the location of a record.
More space efficient representation: reuse space for normal attributes
of free records to store pointers. (No pointers stored in in-use records.)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Variable-Length Records

Variable-length records arise in database systems in several ways:

Storage of multiple record types in a file.
Record types that allow variable lengths for one or more fields such as
strings (varchar)
Record types that allow repeating fields (used in some older data
models).
Attributes are stored in order
Variable length attributes represented by fixed size (offset, length), with
actual data stored after all fixed length attributes
Null values represented by null-value bitmap

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Variable-Length Records: Slotted Page Structure

Slotted page header contains:

number of record entries
end of free space in the block
location and size of each record
Records can be moved around within a page to keep them contiguous
with no empty space between them; entry in the header must be
updated.
Pointers should not point directly to record — instead they should
point to the entry for the record in header.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Organization of Records in Files

Heap – a record can be placed anywhere in the file where there

is space
Sequential – store records in sequential order, based on the
value of the search key of each record
Hashing – a hash function computed on some attribute of each
record; the result specifies in which block of the file the record
should be placed
Records of each relation may be stored in a separate file. In a
multitable clustering file organization records of several
different relations can be stored in the same file
Motivation: store related records on the same block to
minimize I/O

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Sequential File Organization
Suitable for applications that require sequential processing of
the entire file
The records in the file are ordered by a search-key

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Sequential File Organization (Cont.)
Deletion – use pointer chains
Insertion –locate the position where the record is to be inserted
if there is free space insert there
if no free space, insert the record in an overflow block
In either case, pointer chain must be updated
Need to reorganize the file
from time to time to restore
sequential order

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multitable Clustering File Organization
Store several relations in one file using a multitable clustering
file organization

department

instructor

multitable clustering
of department and
instructor

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multitable Clustering File Organization (cont.)

good for queries involving department instructor, and for queries

involving one single department and its instructors
bad for queries involving only department
results in variable size records
Can add pointer chains to link records of a particular relation

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Data Dictionary Storage
The Data dictionary (also called system catalog) stores
metadata; that is, data about data, such as
Information about relations
names of relations
names, types and lengths of attributes of each relation
names and definitions of views
integrity constraints
User and accounting information, including passwords
Statistical and descriptive data
number of tuples in each relation
Physical file organization information
How relation is stored (sequential/hash/…)
Physical location of relation
Information about indices

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relational Representation of System Metadata

Relational
representation on
disk
Specialized data
structures
designed for
efficient access, in
memory

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Storage Access

A database file is partitioned into fixed-length storage units called

blocks. Blocks are units of both storage allocation and data
transfer.
Database system seeks to minimize the number of block transfers
between the disk and memory. We can reduce the number of
disk accesses by keeping as many blocks as possible in main
memory.
Buffer – portion of main memory available to store copies of disk
blocks.
Buffer manager – subsystem responsible for allocating buffer
space in main memory.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Buffer Manager
Programs call on the buffer manager when they need a block
from disk.
1. If the block is already in the buffer, buffer manager returns
the address of the block in main memory
2. If the block is not in the buffer, the buffer manager
1. Allocates space in the buffer for the block
1. Replacing (throwing out) some other block, if required,
to make space for the new block.
2. Replaced block written back to disk only if it was
modified since the most recent time that it was written
to/fetched from the disk.
2. Reads the block from the disk to the buffer, and returns
the address of the block in main memory to requester.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Buffer-Replacement Policies
Most operating systems replace the block least recently used
(LRU strategy)
Idea behind LRU – use past pattern of block references as a
predictor of future references
Queries have well-defined access patterns (such as sequential
scans), and a database system can use the information in a user’s
query to predict future references
LRU can be a bad strategy for certain access patterns involving
repeated scans of data
 For example: when computing the join of 2 relations r and s
by a nested loops
for each tuple tr of r do
for each tuple ts of s do
if the tuples tr and ts match …
Mixed strategy with hints on replacement strategy provided
by the query optimizer is preferable

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.49 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Buffer-Replacement Policies (Cont.)
Pinned block – memory block that is not allowed to be written
back to disk.
Toss-immediate strategy – frees the space occupied by a block
as soon as the final tuple of that block has been processed
Most recently used (MRU) strategy – system must pin the
block currently being processed. After the final tuple of that block
has been processed, the block is unpinned, and it becomes the
most recently used block.
Buffer manager can use statistical information regarding the
probability that a request will reference a particular relation
E.g., the data dictionary is frequently accessed. Heuristic:
keep data-dictionary blocks in main memory buffer
Buffer managers also support forced output of blocks for the
purpose of recovery

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Introduction to
Indexing and Hashing

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.51 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indexing: 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 10.52 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Index Evaluation Metrics
Access types supported efficiently. E.g.,
records with a specified value in the attribute
or records with an attribute value falling in a specified range of
values.
Access time
Insertion time
Deletion time
Space overhead

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.53 ©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 - 6th Edition 10.54 ©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 10.55 ©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 10.56 ©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 10.57 ©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 10.58 ©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 10.59 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multilevel Index (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.60 ©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 10.61 ©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 10.62 ©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 10.63 ©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 - 6th Edition 10.64 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of B+-Tree

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.65 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 - 6th Edition 10.66 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash File Organization

Hash file organization of instructor file, using dept_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(Music) = 1 h(History) = 2
h(Physics) = 3 h(Elec. Eng.) = 3

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.67 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Hash File Organization

Hash file organization of instructor file, using dept_name as key

(see previous slide for details).
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.68 ©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 - 6th Edition 10.69 ©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 - 6th Edition 10.70 ©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 - 6th Edition 10.71 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Bitmap Indices
Bitmap indices are a special type of index designed for efficient
querying on multiple keys
Records in a relation are assumed to be numbered sequentially
from, say, 0
Given a number n it must be easy to retrieve record n
 Particularly easy if records are of fixed size
Applicable on attributes that take on a relatively small number
of distinct values
E.g. gender, country, state, …
E.g. income-level (income broken up into a small number of
levels such as 0-9999, 10000-19999, 20000-50000, 50000-
infinity)
A bitmap is simply an array of bits

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.72 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Bitmap Indices (Cont.)
In its simplest form a bitmap index on an attribute has a bitmap for
each value of the attribute
Bitmap has as many bits as records
In a bitmap for value v, the bit for a record is 1 if the record has the
value v for the attribute, and is 0 otherwise

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.73 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Introduction to
Query Processing and Optimization

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.74 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps in Query Processing
1. Parsing and translation
2. Optimization
3. Evaluation

75
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.75 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps in Query Processing
(Cont.)
Parsing and translation
translate the query into its internal form. This is then translated into
relational algebra.
Parser checks syntax, verifies relations
Evaluation
The query-execution engine takes a query-evaluation plan, executes
that plan, and returns the answers to the query.

76
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.76 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps in Query Processing :
Optimization (example)
select balance
from account
where balance<2500
A relational algebra expression may have many equivalent expressions
E.g., balance2500(balance(account)) is equivalent to
balance(balance2500(account))
Each relational algebra operation can be evaluated using one of several
different algorithms
Correspondingly, a relational-algebra expression can be evaluated in
many ways.
Annotated expression specifying detailed evaluation strategy is called an
evaluation-plan.
E.g., can use an index on balance to find accounts with balance < 2500,
or can perform complete relation scan and discard accounts with
balance  2500
77
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.77 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps: Optimization (Cont.)

Query Optimization: Amongst all equivalent evaluation plans choose

the one with lowest cost.
Cost is estimated using statistical information from the
database catalog
 e.g. number of tuples in each relation, size of tuples, etc.

78
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.78 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Measures of Query Cost

Cost is generally measured as total elapsed time for answering

query
Many factors contribute to time cost
 disk accesses, CPU, or even network communication
Typically disk access is the predominant cost, and is also
relatively easy to estimate. Measured by taking into account
Number of seeks * average-seek-cost
Number of blocks read * average-block-read-cost
Number of blocks written * average-block-write-cost
 Cost to write a block is greater than cost to read a block
– data is read back after being written to ensure that
the write was successful

79
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.79 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Alternative Query Expressions (ex.)
Alternative ways of evaluating a given query
Equivalent expressions
Different algorithms for each operation

80
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.80 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Query Evaluation Plan (example)
An evaluation plan defines exactly what algorithm is used for each
operation, and how the execution of the operations is coordinated.

81
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.81 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Introduction (Cont.)

Cost difference between evaluation plans for a query can be enormous

E.g. seconds vs. days in some cases
Steps in cost-based query optimization
1. Generate logically equivalent expressions using equivalence rules
2. Annotate resultant expressions to get alternative query plans
3. Choose the cheapest plan based on estimated cost
Estimate of plan cost based on:
Statistical information about relations. e.g. -
 number of tuples, number of distinct values for an attribute
Statistics estimation for intermediate results
 to compute cost of complex expressions
Cost formulae for algorithms, computed using statistics

82
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.82 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transactions

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.83 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transaction Concept
A transaction is a unit of program execution that accesses and
possibly updates various data items.
A transaction must see a consistent database.
During transaction execution the database may be temporarily
inconsistent.
When the transaction completes successfully (is committed), the
database must be consistent.
After a transaction commits, the changes it has made to the
database persist, even if there are system failures.
Multiple transactions can execute in parallel.
Two main issues to deal with:
Failures of various kinds, such as hardware failures and system
crashes
Concurrent execution of multiple transactions

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.84 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 ACID Properties of Transactions
A transaction is a unit of program execution that accesses and possibly
updates various data items.To preserve the integrity of data the database
system must ensure:
Atomicity. Either all operations of the transaction are properly reflected
in the database or none are.
Consistency. Execution of a transaction in isolation preserves the
consistency of the database.
Isolation. Although multiple transactions may execute concurrently,
each transaction must be unaware of other concurrently executing
transactions. Intermediate transaction results must be hidden from other
concurrently executed transactions.
That is, for every pair of transactions Ti and Tj, it appears to Ti that
either Tj, finished execution before Ti started, or Tj started execution
after Ti finished.
Durability. After a transaction completes successfully, the changes it
has made to the database persist, even if there are system failures.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.85 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Fund Transfer (Transaction)
Transaction to transfer $50 from account A to account B:
1. read(A)
2. A := A – 50
3. write(A)
4. read(B)
5. B := B + 50
6. write(B)
Atomicity requirement — if the transaction fails after step 3 and
before step 6, the system should ensure that its updates are not
reflected in the database, else an inconsistency will result.
Consistency requirement – the sum of A and B is unchanged by the
execution of the transaction.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.86 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Fund Transfer (Cont.)
Isolation requirement — if between steps 3 and 6, another
transaction is allowed to access the partially updated database, it will
see an inconsistent database (the sum A + B will be less than it
should be).
Isolation can be ensured trivially by running transactions serially,
that is one after the other.
However, executing multiple transactions concurrently has
significant benefits, as we will see later.
Durability requirement — once the user has been notified that the
transaction has completed (i.e., the transfer of the $50 has taken
place), the updates to the database by the transaction must persist
despite failures.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.87 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transaction State
Active – the initial state; the transaction stays in this state while it is
executing
Partially committed – after the final statement has been executed.
Failed -- after the discovery that normal execution can no longer
proceed.
Aborted – after the transaction has been rolled back and the
database restored to its state prior to the start of the transaction.
Two options after it has been aborted:
restart the transaction; can be done only if no internal
logical error
kill the transaction
Committed – after successful completion.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.88 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transaction State (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 10.89 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan