Disk Storage Devices

• Preferred secondary storage device for high

storage capacity and low cost.
• Data stored as magnetized areas on magnetic
disk surfaces.
• A disk pack contains several magnetic disks
connected to a rotating spindle.
• Disks are divided into concentric circular tracks
on each disk surface.
• Track capacities vary typically from 4 to 50 Kbytes or
more
Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
• A track is divided into smaller blocks or sectors
• because it usually contains a large amount of information
• The division of a track into sectors is hard-coded on the
disk surface and cannot be changed.
• One type of sector organization calls a portion of a track
that subtends a fixed angle at the center as a sector.
• A track is divided into blocks.
• The block size B is fixed for each system.
• Typical block sizes range from B=512 bytes to B=4096 bytes.
• Whole blocks are transferred between disk and main
memory for processing.
Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
Disk Storage Devices (cont.)
• A read-write head moves to the track that contains the
block to be transferred.
• Disk rotation moves the block under the read-write head for
reading or writing.
• A physical disk block (hardware) address consists of:
• a cylinder number (imaginary collection of tracks of same
radius from all recorded surfaces)
• the track number or surface number (within the cylinder)
• and block number (within track).
• Reading or writing a disk block is time consuming because
of the seek time s and rotational delay (latency) rd.
• Double buffering can be used to speed up the transfer of
contiguous disk blocks.
Records
• Fixed and variable length records
• Records contain fields which have values of a
particular type
• E.g., amount, date, time, age
• Fields themselves may be fixed length or variable
length
• Variable length fields can be mixed into one
record:
• Separator characters or length fields are needed so
that the record can be “parsed.”
Blocking
• Blocking:
• Refers to storing a number of records in one block on
the disk.
• Blocking factor (bfr) refers to the number of
records per block.
• There may be empty space in a block if an
integral number of records do not fit in one
block.
• Spanned Records:
• Refers to records that exceed the size of one or more
blocks and hence span a number of blocks.
Spanned and Unspanned Records
Files of Records
• A file is a sequence of records, where each record is a
collection of data values (or data items).
• A file descriptor (or file header) includes information
that describes the file, such as the field names and their
data types, and the addresses of the file blocks on disk.
• Records are stored on disk blocks.
• The blocking factor bfr for a file is the (average) number
of file records stored in a disk block.
• A file can have fixed-length records or variable-length
records.
Files of Records (cont.)
• File records can be unspanned or spanned
• Unspanned: no record can span two blocks
• Spanned: a record can be stored in more than one block
• The physical disk blocks that are allocated to hold the
records of a file can be contiguous, linked, or indexed.
• In a file of fixed-length records, all records have the same
format. Usually, unspanned blocking is used with such
files.
• Files of variable-length records require additional
information to be stored in each record, such as
separator characters and field types.
• Usually spanned blocking is used with such files.
Unordered Files
• Also called a heap or a pile file.
• New records are inserted at the end of the file.
• A linear search through the file records is
necessary to search for a record.
• This requires reading and searching half the file
blocks on the average, and is hence quite expensive.
• Record insertion is quite efficient.
• Reading the records in order of a particular field
requires sorting the file records.
 Ordered Files
• Also called a sequential file.
• File records are kept sorted by the values of an ordering field.
• Insertion is expensive: records must be inserted in the correct
order.
• It is common to keep a separate unordered overflow (or
transaction) file for new records to improve insertion
efficiency; this is periodically merged with the main ordered
file.
• A binary search can be used to search for a record on its
ordering field value.
• This requires reading and searching log 2 of the file blocks on
the average, an improvement over linear search.
• Reading the records in order of the ordering field is quite
efficient.
Ordered Files (cont.)

Ordering field  Name

 Average Access Times
• The following table shows the average access time
to access a specific record for a given type of file
Hashed Files
• Hashing for disk files is called External Hashing
• The file blocks are divided into M equal-sized buckets, numbered
bucket0, bucket1, ..., bucketM-1.
• Typically, a bucket corresponds to one (or a fixed number of)
disk block.
• One of the file fields is designated to be the hash key of the file.
• The record with hash key value K is stored in bucket i, where i=h(K),
and h is the hashing function.
• Search is very efficient on the hash key.
• Collisions occur when a new record hashes to a bucket that is
already full.
• An overflow file is kept for storing such records.
• Overflow records that hash to each bucket can be linked
together.
Example:
Hash Function h(x) = x % 10 (modular operation)
Example:
Hash Function h(x) = x % 10 (modular operation)

• Collision!
 Hashed Files (cont.)
There are numerous methods for collision resolution, including the
following:
• Open addressing: Proceeding from the occupied position
specified by the hash address, the program checks the
subsequent positions in order until an unused (empty) position is
found.
• Chaining: For this method, various overflow locations are kept,
usually by extending the array with a number of overflow
positions. In addition, a pointer field is added to each record
location. 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.
• Multiple hashing: The program applies a second hash function if
the first results in a collision. If another collision results, the
program uses open addressing or applies a third hash function
and then uses open addressing if necessary.
 Hashed Files (cont.)
• See the animations
• https://www.cs.usfca.edu/~galles/visualization/Algorithms.
html
Hashed Files - Overflow Handling
Hashed Files (cont.)
• To reduce overflow records, a hash file is
typically kept 70-80% full.
• The hash function h should distribute the
records uniformly among the buckets
• Otherwise, search time will be increased because
many overflow records will exist.
• Main disadvantages of static external hashing:
• Fixed number of buckets M is a problem if the number
of records in the file grows or shrinks.
• Ordered access on the hash key is quite inefficient
(requires sorting the records).
Hashed Files – External Hashing
(cont.)
Dynamic And Extendible Hashed
Files
• Dynamic and Extendible Hashing Techniques
• Hashing techniques are adapted to allow the dynamic
growth and shrinking of the number of file records.
• These techniques include the following: dynamic
hashing, extendible hashing, and linear hashing.
• Both dynamic and extendible hashing use the binary
representation of the hash value h(K) in order to access
a directory.
• In dynamic hashing the directory is a binary tree.
• In extendible hashing the directory is an array of size 2d
where d is called the global depth.
Dynamic And Extendible Hashing
(cont.)
• The directories can be stored on disk, and they expand or
shrink dynamically.
• Directory entries point to the disk blocks that contain the
stored records.
• An insertion in a disk block that is full causes the block to
split into two blocks and the records are redistributed
among the two blocks.
• The directory is updated appropriately.
• Dynamic and extendible hashing do not require an
overflow area.
• Linear hashing does require an overflow area but does
not use a directory.
• Blocks are split in linear order as the file expands.
Extendible
Hashing
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.
Indexes as Access Paths (cont.)
• 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
Indexes as Access Paths (cont.)
• 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 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 log2bI= log2938= 10 block accesses
• This is compared to an average linear search cost of:
• (b/2)= 10000/2= 5000 block accesses
• If the file records are ordered, the binary search cost would be:
• log2b= log210000= 14 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.
Primary Index on
the Ordering Key
Field
Primary Index on
the Ordering Key
Field
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.
A Clustering
Index
Example
Another
Clustering
Index
Example
Another
Clustering
Index
Example
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
non-key with duplicate values.
• The 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
Example of a
Dense
Secondary
Index
Example of a
Secondary
Index
Properties of Index Types
Properties of Index Types
Properties of Index Types
Properties of Index Types
Summary of Single-Level Indexes
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
A Two-Level
Primary Index
A Two-
Level
Primary
Index
Multi-Level Indexes
• Such a multi-level index is a form of search tree
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.
Dynamic Multilevel Indexes
A Node in a Search Tree with Pointers to
Subtrees Below It

Ki : ith Key value

X : search Key
Pi : ith Pointer to the ith subtree
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
Dynamic Multilevel Indexes Using B-Trees and
B+-Trees (cont.)
• 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
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

• See the animations

• https://www.cs.usfca.edu/~galles/visualization/Algorith
ms.html
B-tree Structures
The Nodes of a B+-tree
Example of an
Insertion in a
B+-tree
Example of a
Deletion in a
B+-tree
With the salary index:

Without the salary index: