Abstract
A variant of aB-tree known as anSB-tree is introduced, with the object of offering high-performance sequential disk access for long range retrievals. The key to this efficiency is a structure that supports multi-page reads (or writes) during sequential access to any node level below the root, even following significant node splitting. In addition, theSB-tree will support a policy to ‘stripe’ successive multi-page blocks on multiple disks to achieve maximum parallelism. Compared to traditionalB-tree structures,SB-tree performance characteristics are less subject to degradation resulting from modifications entailed in growing and shrinking;SB-trees are therefore more appropriate for use in situations where frequent reorganization is not possible. A performance analysis reveals the strengths of theSB-tree by comparing its performance under various circumstances to theB +-tree and the bounded disorder (BD) file of [11]. The performance analysis formulates a new useful concept, the ‘effective depth’ of anSB- orB +-tree, defined as the expected number of pages read from disk to perform a random retrieval search given standard buffering behavior. A graph of effective depth against tree size is shown to have a scalloped appearance, reflecting the changing effectiveness of incremental additions to buffer space.
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O'Neil, P.E. TheSB-tree an index-sequential structure for high-performance sequential access. Acta Informatica 29, 241–265 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01185680
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01185680