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B+-Tree

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

B-tree

Definition

The B+-tree is a disk-based, paginated, dynamically updateable, balanced, and tree-like index structure. It supports the exact match query as well as insertion/deletion operations in O(log p n) I/Os, where n is the number of records in the tree and p is the page capacity in number of records. It also supports the range searches in O(log p n + t ∕p) I/Os, where t is the number of records in the query result.

Historical Background

The binary search tree is a well-known data structure. When the data volume is so large that the tree does not fit in main memory, a disk-based search tree is necessary. The most commonly used disk-based search trees are the B-tree and its variations. Originally invented by Bayer and McCreight [2], the B-tree may be regarded as an extension of the balanced binary tree, since a B-tree is always balanced (i.e., all leaf nodes are on the same level). Since each disk access retrieves or updates an entire block of information between...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Bayer R. The universal B-tree for multidimensional indexing: general concepts. In Proc. Int. Conf. on Worldwide Computing and Its Applications (WWCA), 1997, pp. 198–209.

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  2. Bayer R. and McCreight E.M. Organization and maintenance of large ordered indices. Acta Inf., 1, 1972.

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  3. Comer D. The ubiquitous B-tree. ACM Comput. Surv., 11(2), 1979.

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  4. Knuth D. The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 3: Sorting and Searching. Addison Wesley, MA, USA, 1973.

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  5. Robinson J. The K-D-B tree: a search structure for large multidimensional dynamic indexes. In Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int. Conf. on Management of Data, 1981, pp. 10–18.

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  6. Srinivasan V. and Carey M.J. Performance of B+ tree concurrency algorithms. VLDB J., 2(4):361–406, 1993.

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  7. Theodoridis Y. The R-tree-portal. http://www.rtreeportal.org, 2003.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Donghui Zhang & Kenneth Paul Baclawski

  2. University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Vassilis J. Tsotras

Authors
  1. Donghui Zhang
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  2. Kenneth Paul Baclawski
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  3. Vassilis J. Tsotras
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Zhang, D., Baclawski, K.P., J. Tsotras, V. (2009). B+-Tree. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_739

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