Chapter – 3

File Organization and

Indexing
 Outline
 Types of Single-level Ordered Indexes
 Primary Indexes
 Clustering Indexes
 Secondary Indexes
 Multilevel Indexes
 Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees and B+-Trees

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 Introduction
 Indexes
 Additional auxiliary access structures - used to speed up the
retrieval of records in response to certain search conditions
 Enable efficient access to records based on the indexing fields
that are used to construct the index
 Any field of the file can be used to create an index, and multiple
indexes on different fields-as well as indexes on multiple fields-
can be constructed on the same file
 A variety of indexes are possible; each of them uses a particular
data structure to speed up the search
 To find a record or records in the data file based on a search
condition on an indexing field, the index is searched, which leads to
pointers to one or more disk blocks in the data file where the required
records are located

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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

 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

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 Indexes as Access Paths
 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

 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

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 Indexes as Access Paths
 For an index on the SSN field, assume the field size VSSN=9 bytes, assume
the record pointer size PR=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/ BfrI)= (30000/32)= 938 blocks
 Binary search needs log2b= 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

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 Types of Single-Level
Indexes
 Types of Single-level Indexes

Primary Indexes
 Clustering Indexes
 Secondary Indexes

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 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
 Each index entry has the value of the primary key field for the first
record in a block and a pointer to that block as its two fields :
index entry i as <K(i), P(i)>
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Types of Single-Level
Indexes

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 Types of Single-Level
Indexes
 Clustering Indexes
 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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 Types of Single-Level
Indexes
 Figure : A
Clustering index
on the
DEPTNUMBER
ordering non-key
field of an
EMPLOYEE file

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 Types of Single-Level
Indexes
 Another Example

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 Types of Single-Level
Indexes
 Secondary Index
 Defined on an unordered data file
 The secondary index may be on
 a key field (with a unique value) in every record, or
 a non-key with duplicate values

 A Secondary index is an ordered file with two fields

 The first field is of the same data type as some non-ordering
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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Properties of Index Types

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 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

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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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 Dynamic Multilevel Indexes
Using

B-Trees and B +
-Trees
Most multi-level indexes use B-tree or B+-tree data structures
because of the insertion and deletion problem
 This leaves 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
B-Trees and B+-Trees
 An insertion 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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B-tree Structures

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B+-tree

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
The Nodes of a B+-tree
FIGURE 14.11 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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 In-class Exercise
 Consider the following B+ tree index on the “price” field of a relation
Products(itemID int, price int)

 Calculate the number of disk I/Os if B+ tree index is used to

answer the following query. Brief your calculation.
SELECT * FROM R WHERE PRICE ≥ 39 AND PRICE ≤ 78;

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 In-class Exercise

 We need a total of 12 I/Os

 5 index page I/Os: A -> B -> F -> G -> H
 7 file page I/Os to fetch records: 39, 44, 46, 52, 66, 67, 77

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