Index Structures

Chapter : Objectives
Types of Single-level Ordered Indexes
Primary

Indexes
Clustering Indexes
Secondary Indexes
Multilevel Indexes
Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees

and B+-Trees
Indexes on Multiple Keys
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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.

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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
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Indexes as Access Paths (contd.)

Example: Given the following data file:
EMPLOYEE(NAME, SSN, ADDRESS, JOB, SAL, ... )
Suppose that:
record size R=150 bytes
block size B=512 bytes
r=30000 records
Then, we get:
blocking factor Bfr= B div R= 512 div 150= 3 records/block
number of file blocks b= (r/Bfr)= (30000/3)= 10000 blocks
For an index on the SSN field, assume the field size V SSN=9 bytes,
assume the record pointer size P R=7 bytes. Then:
index entry size RI=(VSSN+ PR)=(9+7)=16 bytes
index blocking factor BfrI= B div RI= 512 div 16= 32 entries/block
number of index blocks b= (r/ Bfr I)= (30000/32)= 938 blocks
binary search needs log2bI= log2938= 10 block accesses
This is compared to an average linear search cost of:
(b/2)= 30000/2= 15000 block accesses
If the file records are ordered, the binary search cost would be:
log2b= log230000= 15 block accesses

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.
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Primary
index on the
ordering key
field of the
file shown in
Figure .

Types of Single-Level Indexes

Clustering Index

Defined on an ordered data file

The data file is ordered on a non-key field unlike primary

index, which requires that the ordering field of the data file
have a distinct value for each record.

Includes one index entry for each distinct value of the field;
the index entry points to the first data block that contains
records with that field value.

It is another example of nondense index where Insertion and

Deletion is relatively straightforward with a clustering index.
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A clustering index
on the DEPTNUMBER
ordering nonkey field
of an
EMPLOYEE file.

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Clustering index
with a separate
block cluster for
each group of
records that share
the same value for
the clustering field.

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Types of Single-Level Indexes

Secondary Index

A secondary index provides a secondary means of accessing a file for

which some primary access already exists.

The secondary index may be on a field which is a candidate key and

has a unique value in every record, or a nonkey with duplicate values.

The index is an ordered file with two fields.

The first field is of the same data type as some nonordering

field of the data file that is an indexing field.
The second field is either a block pointer or a record pointer.
There can be many secondary indexes (and hence, indexing
fields) for the same file.

Includes one entry for each record in the data file; hence, it is a
dense index
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A dense
secondary index
(with block
pointers) on a
nonordering key
field of a file.

13

A secondary index (with recored pointers) on a nonkey field implemented

using one level of indirection so that index entries are of fixed length and
have unique field values.

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15

Multi-Level Indexes
Because a single-level index is an ordered file, we can create a

primary index to the index itself ; in this case, the original index
file is called the first-level index and the index to the index is
called the second-level index.

We can repeat the process, creating a third, fourth, ..., top level

until all entries of the top level fit in one disk block

A multi-level index can be created for any type of first-level

index (primary, secondary, clustering) as long as the first-level

index consists of more than one disk block

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A two-level
primary index
resembling
ISAM (Indexed
Sequential
Access Method)
organization.

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Multi-Level Indexes

Such a multi-level index is a form of search tree ;

however, insertion and deletion of new index entries is

a severe problem because every level of the index is an
ordered file.

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FIGURE 4.8
A node in a search tree with pointers to subtrees
below it.

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FIGURE 4.9
A search tree of order p = 3.

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Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using Band

B+-Trees
Trees
Because of the
insertion
and deletion problem, most multi-level

indexes use B-tree or B+-tree data structures, which leave space

in each tree node (disk block) to allow for new index entries

These data structures are variations of search trees that allow

efficient insertion and deletion of new search values.

In B-Tree and B+-Tree data structures, each node corresponds to

a disk block

Each node is kept between half-full and completely full

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Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using BTrees

B+-Trees (contd.)
An insertionand
into a node that is not full is quite efficient; if a
node is full the insertion causes a split into two nodes
Splitting may propagate to other tree levels
A deletion is quite efficient if a node does not become less than

half full
If a deletion causes a node to become less than half full, it must

be merged with neighboring nodes

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Difference between B-tree and B+-tree

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

tree
In a B+-tree, all pointers to data records exists at the leaf-level

nodes
A B+-tree can have less levels (or higher capacity of search

values) than the corresponding B-tree

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FIGURE 4.10
B-tree structures. (a) A node in a B-tree with q 1 search
values. (b) A B-tree of order p = 3. The values were
inserted in the order 8, 5, 1, 7, 3, 12, 9, 6.

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FIGURE 4.11
The nodes of a B+-tree. (a) Internal node of a B+-tree with q 1 search
values. (b) Leaf node of a B+-tree with q 1 search values and q 1 data
pointers.

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Choose file organizations and indexes

Determine optimal file organizations to store
the base tables, and the indexes required to
achieve acceptable performance.
Consists of the following steps:

Step 1 Analyze transactions

Step 2 Choose file organizations
Step 3 Choose indexes

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Analyze transactions
To understand functionality of the transactions
and to analyze the important ones.
Identify performance criteria, such as:
transactions that run frequently and will have a
significant impact on performance;
transactions that are critical to the business;
times during the day/week when there will be a
high demand made on the database (called the
peak load).

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Analyze transactions
Use this information to identify the parts of the

database that may cause performance

problems.
Often not possible to analyze all expected
transactions, so investigate most important
ones.

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Choose file organizations

To determine an efficient file organization for
each base table.
File

organizations include Heap, Hash, Indexed

Sequential Access Method (ISAM), B+-Tree, and
Clusters.
Some DBMSs (particularly PC-based DBMS) have
fixed file organization that you cannot alter.

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Choose indexes
Determine whether adding indexes
improve the performance of the system.

will

One approach is to keep records unordered and create

as many secondary indexes as necessary.

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Choose indexes
Or could order records in table by specifying a primary

or clustering index.
In this case, choose the column for ordering or
clustering the records as:

column that is used most often for join operations - this

makes join operation more efficient, or
column that is used most often to access the records in a
table in order of that column.

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Choose indexes
If ordering column chosen is key of table, index will be

a primary index; otherwise, index will be a clustering

index.
Each table can only have either a primary index or a
clustering index.
Secondary indexes provide additional keys for a base
table that can be used to retrieve data more efficiently.

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Choose indexes Guidelines for

choosing wish-list
(1) Do not index small tables.
(2) Add secondary index to any column that is heavily
used as a secondary key.
(3) Add secondary index to a FK if it is frequently
accessed.
(4) Add secondary index on columns that are involved in:
selection or join criteria; ORDER BY; GROUP BY;
and other operations involving sorting (such as UNION
or DISTINCT).

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Choose indexes Guidelines for

choosing wish-list
Add secondary index on columns involved in built-in
functions.
(6) Add secondary index on columns that could result in
an index-only plan.
(7) Avoid indexing an column or table that is frequently
updated.
(8) Avoid indexing an column if the query will retrieve a
significant proportion of the records in the table.
(9) Avoid indexing columns that consist of long character
strings.
(5)

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