Review: (R&G Chapter 9) - Aren't Databases Great? - Relational Model - SQL

Review
Storing Data: Disks and Files

Lecture 5
(R&G Chapter 9)
Arent Databases Great?

Relational model
SQL
Yea, from the table of my memory

Ill wipe away all trivial fond records.
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet
Disks, Memory, and Files

The BIG picture
Query Optimization
and Execution
Disks and Files
DBMS stores information on disks.
Relational Operators
In an electronic world, disks are a mechanical

anachronism!
Files and Access Methods
This has major implications for DBMS design!
Buffer Management
Disk Space Management
READ: transfer data from disk to main memory (RAM).

WRITE: transfer data from RAM to disk.
Both are high-cost operations, relative to in-memory
operations, so must be planned carefully!
DB
Why Not Store Everything in Main Memory?
Costs too much. For ~$1000,

PCConnection will sell you either
~20GB of RAM
~40GB of flash
~5 TB of disk
The Storage Hierarchy

Smaller, Faster
Main memory (RAM) for
currently used data.
Disk for the main database
(secondary storage).
Tapes for archiving older
versions of the data (tertiary
storage).
Main memory is volatile. We want data

to be saved between runs. (Obviously!)
Bigger, Slower
Source: Operating Systems Concepts 5th Edition
Thought Experiment: How Much

RAM?
Quick Review
Say your biz has

100,000 customers
10,000 products
Say space you need is
10K/customer
50K/product
How much space do you need?
1G cust + .5G product = 1.5G
Double it for space utilization = 3G
Times 10 for growth = 30G
at, say, $100/G =
nothing! (to a company with 100,000 customers)
1 millisecond = 1ms = 1/1000 second

1 microsecond = 1us = 1/1000 ms
1 nanosecond = 1ns = 1/1000 us
Clock rate 3Ghz, how long is a cycle?
Jim Grays Storage Latency Analogy:

How Far Away is the Data?
10 9
Andromeda
Tape /Optical
Robot
10 6 Disk
100
Sacramento
Memory
Secondary storage device of choice for ~40

years.
Main advantage over
2,000 Years
Pluto
tapes: random access vs. sequential

RAM: persistence, easy growth
2 Years
Data is stored and retrieved in units called

disk blocks or pages.
Unlike RAM, time to retrieve a disk block
varies depending upon location on disk.
1.5 hr
This Lecture Hall

10 min
This Room
My Head
1 min
10 On Board Cache
2 On Chip Cache
1ns Registers
Therefore, relative placement of blocks on disk

has major impact on DBMS performance!
Components of a Disk
Accessing a Disk Page

Spindle
Disk head
Tracks
The platters spin (say, 120 rps).

The arm assembly is moved
in or out to position a head
on a desired track. Tracks
under heads make a cylinder
(imaginary!).
Only one head
reads/writes at any
one time.
Time to access (read/write) a disk block:

Sector
Arm movement
Arm assembly
Block size is a multiple

of sector size (which is fixed).
Disks
Platters
seek time ( moving arms to position disk head on track)

rotational delay ( waiting for block to rotate under head)
transfer time ( actually moving data to/from disk surface)
Seek time and rotational delay dominate.

Seek time varies between about 0.3 and 10msec
Rotational delay varies from 0 to 4msec
Transfer rate .01 - .05msec per 8K block
Key to lower I/O cost: reduce seek/rotation

delays! Hardware vs. software solutions?
Arranging Pages on Disk
Thought experiment
What is a good disk page size?
`Next block concept:
8K?
32K?
1Meg?
blocks on same track, followed by

blocks on same cylinder, followed by
blocks on adjacent cylinder
Blocks in a file should be arranged

sequentially on disk (by `next), to minimize
seek and rotational delay.
For a sequential scan, pre-fetching several
pages at a time is a big win!
Why?
Context
Lowest layer of DBMS software manages space

on disk (using OS file system or not?).
Higher levels call upon this layer to:
Query Optimization
and Execution
allocate/de-allocate a page
read/write a page
Best if a request for a sequence of pages is

satisfied by pages stored sequentially on disk!
Buffer Management
Responsibility of disk space manager.

Higher levels dont know how this is done, or how
free space is managed.
Though they may make performance assumptions!
DB
Hence disk space manager should do a decent job.
Buffer Management in a DBMS
When a Page is Requested ...
Page Requests from Higher Levels
Buffer pool information table contains:

<frame#, pageid, pin_count, dirty>
BUFFER POOL
If requested page is not in pool:
disk page
Choose a frame for replacement.

Only un-pinned pages are candidates!
If frame is dirty, write it to disk
Read requested page into chosen frame
free frame
MAIN MEMORY
DISK
DB
choice of frame dictated

by replacement policy
Data must be in RAM for DBMS to operate on it!

Buffer Mgr hides the fact that not all data is in
RAM
Pin the page and return its address.

If requests can be predicted (e.g., sequential scans)
pages can be pre-fetched several pages at a time!
More on Buffer Management

Requestor of page must eventually unpin it,
and indicate whether page has been
modified:
dirty bit is used for this.
Page in pool may be requested many times,

a pin count is used.
To pin a page, pin_count++
A page is a candidate for replacement iff pin
count == 0 (unpinned)
CC & recovery may entail additional I/O when

a frame is chosen for replacement.
Write-Ahead Log protocol; more later!
LRU Replacement Policy
Buffer Replacement Policy

Frame is chosen for replacement by a
replacement policy:
Least-recently-used (LRU), MRU, Clock,
etc.
Policy can have big impact on # of

I/Os; depends on the access pattern.
For Transactional workloads, notion of
a working set - pages that should be
in memory.
Clock Replacement Policy

D(1)
Least Recently Used (LRU)

for each page in buffer pool, keep track of time when
last unpinned
replace the frame which has the oldest (earliest) time
very common policy: intuitive and simple
Works well for repeated accesses to popular pages
Problems?
Problem: Sequential flooding
LRU + repeated sequential scans.
# buffer frames < # pages in file means each page
request causes an I/O.
Idea: MRU better in this scenario?
DBMS vs. OS File System

OS does disk space & buffer mgmt: why not let
OS manage these tasks?
Some limitations, e.g., files cant span disks.
Buffer management in DBMS requires ability to:
pin a page in buffer pool, force a page to disk &
order writes (important for implementing CC &
recovery)
adjust replacement policy, and pre-fetch pages based
on access patterns in typical DB operations.
A(1)
B(p)
An approximation of LRU
C(1)
Arrange frames into a cycle, store one reference bit
per frame
Can think of this as the 2nd chance bit
When pin count reduces to 0, turn on ref. bit

When replacement necessary
do for each page in cycle {
if (pincount == 0 && ref bit is on)
turn off ref bit;
else if (pincount == 0 && ref bit is off)
choose this page for replacement;
Questions:
} until a page is chosen;
How like LRU?

Problems?
Context
Query Optimization
and Execution
Buffer Management
DB
Files of Records
Unordered (Heap) Files
Blocks are the interface for I/O, but

Higher levels of DBMS operate on records,
and files of records.
FILE: A collection of pages, each containing a
collection of records. Must support:
insert/delete/modify record
fetch a particular record (specified using record id)
scan all records (possibly with some conditions on
the records to be retrieved)
Simplest file structure contains records in no

particular order.
As file grows and shrinks, disk pages are allocated
and de-allocated.
To support record level operations, we must:
keep track of the pages in a file
keep track of free space on pages
keep track of the records on a page
There are many alternatives for keeping track of

this.
Well consider 2
Heap File Implemented as a List
Heap File Using a Page Directory

Data
Page 1
Header
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page 2
Full Pages
Header
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Data
Page
Pages with
Free Space
The header page id and Heap file name must

be stored someplace.
Database catalog
Each page contains 2 `pointers plus data.
Indexes (a sneak preview)
A Heap file allows us to retrieve records:

by specifying the rid, or
by scanning all records sequentially
Sometimes, we want to retrieve records by

specifying the values in one or more fields,
e.g.,
Find all students in the CS department
Find all students with a gpa > 3
Indexes are file structures that enable us to

answer such value-based queries efficiently.
Data
Page N
DIRECTORY
The entry for a page can include the number

of free bytes on the page.
The directory is a collection of pages; linked
list implementation is just one alternative.
Much smaller than linked list of all HF pages!
Record Formats: Fixed Length
F1
F2
F3
F4
L1
L2
L3
L4
Base address (B)
Address = B+L1+L2
Information about field types same for all

records in a file; stored in system catalogs.
Finding ith field done via arithmetic.
Record Formats: Variable Length
Page Formats: Fixed Length Records
Two alternative formats (# fields is fixed):

F1
F2
F3
Slot 1
Slot 2
F4
...
$
Slot N
Fields Delimited by Special Symbols

F1
F2
Slot 1
Slot 2
F3
Free
Space
Slot M
F4
N
PACKED
Array of Field Offsets

Second offers direct access to ith field, efficient storage
of nulls (special dont know value); small directory overhead.
1 . . . 0 1 1M
number
of records
M ...
3 2 1
UNPACKED, BITMAP
number
of slots
Record id = <page id, slot #>. In first

alternative, moving records for free space
management changes rid; may not be acceptable.
Page Formats: Variable Length

Records
Rid = (i,N)
...
Slot N
System Catalogs
For each relation:
Page i
Rid = (i,2)
Rid = (i,1)
name, file location, file structure (e.g., Heap file)

attribute name and type, for each attribute
index name, for each index
integrity constraints
For each index:

20
N
...
16
2
24
N
1 # slots
SLOT DIRECTORY
Pointer
to start
of free
space
Can move records on page without changing

rid; so, attractive for fixed-length records
too.
Attr_Cat(attr_name, rel_name, type, position)

attr_name
attr_name
rel_name
type
position
sid
name
login
age
gpa
fid
fname
sal
rel_name
Attribute_Cat
Attribute_Cat
Attribute_Cat
Attribute_Cat
Students
Students
Students
Students
Students
Faculty
Faculty
Faculty
structure (e.g., B+ tree) and search key fields
For each view:

view name and definition
Plus statistics, authorization, buffer pool size, etc.
Catalogs are themselves stored as relations!
pg_attribute
type
position
string
1
string
2
string
3
integer
4
string
1
string
2
string
3
integer
4
real
5
string
1
string
2
real
3
Summary
Disks provide cheap, non-volatile storage.

Random access, but cost depends on location of page on
disk; important to arrange data sequentially to minimize
seek and rotation delays.
Buffer manager brings pages into RAM.

Page stays in RAM until released by requestor.
Written to disk when frame chosen for replacement
(which is sometime after requestor releases the page).
Choice of frame to replace based on replacement policy.
Tries to pre-fetch several pages at a time.
Summary (Contd.)
DBMS vs. OS File Support
DBMS needs features not found in many OSs, e.g.,
forcing a page to disk, controlling the order of
page writes to disk, files spanning disks, ability to
control pre-fetching and page replacement policy
based on predictable access patterns, etc.
Variable length record format with field offset

directory offers support for direct access to
ith field and null values.
Slotted page format supports variable length
records and allows records to move on page.
Summary (Contd.)
File layer keeps track of pages in a file, and

supports abstraction of a collection of records.
Pages with free space identified using linked list or
directory structure (similar to how pages in file are
kept track of).
Indexes support efficient retrieval of records

based on the values in some fields.
Catalog relations store information about
relations, indexes and views. (Information that
is common to all records in a given collection.)

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Review

Storing Data: Disks and Files

Arent Databases Great?

Yea, from the table of my memory

Disks, Memory, and Files

Disks and Files

DBMS stores information on disks.

In an electronic world, disks are a mechanical

Files and Access Methods

This has major implications for DBMS design!

READ: transfer data from disk to main memory (RAM).

Why Not Store Everything in Main Memory?

Costs too much. For ~$1000,

The Storage Hierarchy

Main memory is volatile. We want data

Thought Experiment: How Much

Say your biz has

1 millisecond = 1ms = 1/1000 second

Jim Grays Storage Latency Analogy:

Secondary storage device of choice for ~40

tapes: random access vs. sequential

Data is stored and retrieved in units called

This Lecture Hall

Therefore, relative placement of blocks on disk

Accessing a Disk Page

The platters spin (say, 120 rps).

Time to access (read/write) a disk block:

Block size is a multiple

seek time ( moving arms to position disk head on track)

Seek time and rotational delay dominate.

Key to lower I/O cost: reduce seek/rotation

Arranging Pages on Disk

`Next block concept:

blocks on same track, followed by

Blocks in a file should be arranged

Disk Space Management

Lowest layer of DBMS software manages space

Files and Access Methods

Best if a request for a sequence of pages is

Responsibility of disk space manager.

Hence disk space manager should do a decent job.

Buffer Management in a DBMS

When a Page is Requested ...

Page Requests from Higher Levels

Buffer pool information table contains:

If requested page is not in pool:

Choose a frame for replacement.

choice of frame dictated

Data must be in RAM for DBMS to operate on it!

Pin the page and return its address.

More on Buffer Management

Page in pool may be requested many times,

CC & recovery may entail additional I/O when

LRU Replacement Policy

Buffer Replacement Policy

Policy can have big impact on # of

Clock Replacement Policy

Least Recently Used (LRU)