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Contents

1 A Journey of a Byte

2 Buffer Management

3 Field Structures

4 Record Structures

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A Journey of a Byte

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A Journey of a Byte
v Suppose in our program we wrote char ch=‘p’;
file << ch;
v This causes a call to the file manager (a part of O.S.
responsible for I/O operations)

v The O/S (File manager) makes sure that the byte is

written to the disk.

v Pieces of software/hardware involved in I/O:

§ Application Program
§ Operating System/ file manager
§ I/O Processor
§ Disk Controller
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A Journey of a Byte
Step 1

The program asks the operating system to write the contents of

the variable ch to the next available position in the file.

Step 2

The operating system passes the job on to the file manager.

Step 3

The file manager looks up the file in a table containing

information about it, such as whether the file is open and
available for use, what types of access are allowed, if any, and
what physical file the logical name corresponds to.

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A Journey of a Byte
Step 4

The file manager searches a file allocation table for the physical
location of the sector that is to contain the byte.

Step 5

The file manager makes sure that the last sector in the file has
been stored in a system I/O buffer in RAM, then deposits the ‘p’
into its proper position in the buffer.

Step 6

The file manager gives instructions to the I/O processor about

where the byte is stored in RAM and where it needs to be sent
on the disk.

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A Journey of a Byte
Step 7

The I/O processor, finds a time when the drive is available to

receive the data and puts the data in proper format for the disk. It
may also buffer the data to send it out in chunks of the proper
size for the disk.

Step 8

The I/O processor sends the data to the disk controller.

Step 9

The controller instructs the drive to move the read/write head to

the proper track, waits for the desired sector to come under the
read/write head, then sends the byte to the drive to be-deposited,
bit-by-bit, on the surface of the disk.

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A Journey of a Byte
v Application program
§ Requests the I/O operation

v Operating system / file manager

§ Keeps tables for all opened files
§ Brings appropriate sector to buffer.
§ Writes byte to buffer
§ Gives instruction to I/O processor to write data from this buffer into
correct place in disk.
Note: the buffer is an exact image of a cluster in disk.

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A Journey of a Byte
v I/O Processor
§ A separate chip; runs independently of CPU
§ Finds a time when drive is available to receive data and put data
in proper format for the disk
§ Sends data to disk controller

v Disk controller
§ A separate chip; instructs the drive to move R/W head
§ Sends the byte to the surface when the proper sector comes
under R/W head.

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A Journey of a Byte
v I/O Processor
§ A separate chip; runs independently of CPU
§ Finds a time when drive is available to receive data and put data
in proper format for the disk
§ Sends data to disk controller

v Disk controller
§ A separate chip; instructs the drive to move R/W head
§ Sends the byte to the surface when the proper sector comes
under R/W head.

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Buffer Management

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Buffer Management
v Buffering means working with large chunks of data in
main memory so the number of accesses to secondary
storage is reduced.

v Today, we’ll discuss the System I/O buffers. These are

beyond the control of application programs and are
manipulated by the O.S.

v Note that the application program may implement its own

“buffer” – i.e. a place in memory (variable, object) that
accumulates large chunks of data to be later written to
disk as a chunk.

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System I/O Buffer

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Buffer Bottlenecks
v Consider the following program segment:

while (1)
{
infile >> ch;
if (infile.fail())
break;
outfile << ch;
}

v What happens if the O.S. used only one I/O buffer?

§ Buffer bottleneck

v Most O.S. have an input buffer and an output buffer.

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Buffer Strategies
v Double Buffering: Two buffers can be used to allow
processing and I/O to overlap.

§ Suppose that a program is only writing to a disk.

§ CPU wants to fill a buffer at the same time that I/O is being
performed.
§ If two buffers are used and I/O-CPU overlapping is permitted,
CPU can be filling one buffer while the other buffer is being
transmitted to disk.
§ When both tasks are finished, the roles of the buffers can be
exchanged.

v The actual management is done by the O.S.

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Buffer Strategies

Double Buffering:

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Buffer Strategies
v Multiple Buffering: instead of two buffers any number of
buffers can be used to allow processing and I/O to
overlap.

v Buffer pooling:
§ There is a pool of buffers.
§ When a request for a sector is received, O.S. first looks to see that
sector is in some buffer.
§ If not there, it brings the sector to some free buffer. If no free buffer
exists, it must choose an occupied buffer. Usually, LRU (Least
Recently Used) strategy is used.

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Buffer Strategies
v Move mode (using both system buffer & program buffer)
§ moving data from one place in RAM to another before they can be
accessed
§ sometimes, unnecessary data moves

v Locate mode (using system buffer only or program buffer

only)
§ perform I/O directly between secondary storage and program
buffer (program’s data area)
§ system buffers handle all I/Os, but program uses locations through
pointer variable

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Buffer Strategies

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Fundamental File Structure Concepts

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Student Example

Class Structure

class Cstudent struct student

{ {
char m_id[8]; char m_id[8];
char m_fname[10]; char m_fname[10];
char m_lname[10]; char m_lname[10];
char m_address[15]; char m_address[15];
char m_city [15]; char m_city [15];
char m_country [15]; char m_country [15];
}; };

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File Types
v A file can be treated as:

1. a stream of bytes

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt 2349890 Mona

Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt 1210322 Tamer Fouad
123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

2. a collection of records with fields

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt

2349890 Mona Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt
1210322 Tamer Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

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Field & Record Organization

v Field: a data value, smallest unit of data with logical
meaning.

v Record: A group of fields that forms a logical unit.

Memory File
object record
member field

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Field & Record Organization

v Key: a subset of the fields in a record used to uniquely
identify the record

Primary Key Secondary Key

must identify records Does not identify records
uniquely uniquely
It is not dataless It is not dataless
Has a canonical form Has a canonical form

Ex. Student ID Ex. Student Name

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Field Structures

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Field structures
v Methods for organizing fields are:

1. Fix the length of fields

2. Begin each field with a length indicator

3. Separate the fields with delimiters

4. Use a “Keyword=Value” Expression to identify fields

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1- Fix the Length of Fields

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 safa street Cairo Egypt

2349890 Mona Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt

1210322 Tamer Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

8 10 10 15 15 15

v Advantages:
§ Easy to Read/Store

v Disadvantages:
§ Waste space with padding

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2- Begin Each Field with a Length Indicator

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt

2349890 Mona Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt
1210322 Tamer Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

v Advantages:
§ Easy to jump ahead to the end of the field

v Disadvantages:
§ Long fields require more than 1 byte to store length (Max is 255)

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3- Separate the Fields with Delimiters

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt

2349890 Mona Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt
1210322 Tamer Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

v Advantages:
§ May waste less space than with length-based

v Disadvantages:
§ Have to check every byte of field against the delimiter

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4- Use a “Keyword=Value” Expression to Identify Fields

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street

Cairo Egypt 2349890 Mona Hussein 42
El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt 1210322 Tamer
Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

v Advantages:
§ Fields are self describing allows for missing fields

v Disadvantages:
§ Waste space with keywords (50% or more of the file’s space could
be taken up by the keywords )

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Record Structures

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Records Structures
v Methods for organizing records are:

1. Make records a predictable number of bytes ( fixed

length records)

2. Make records a predictable number of fields

3. Begin each record with a length indicator

4. Use an index to keep track of addresses

5. Place a delimiter at the end of each record

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1- Make records a predictable number of bytes

( Fixed Length Records)

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 safa street Cairo Egypt

2349890 Mona Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt

1210322 Tamer Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

8 10 10 15 15 15

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt

2349890 Mona Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt

1210322 Tamer Fouad 123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

73 Bytes

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2- Make records a predictable number of fields

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt 2349890 Mona

Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt 1210322 Tamer Fouad
123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

v In this example, each record consists of 6 fields.

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3- Begin each record with a length indicator

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt 2349890 Mona

Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt 1210322 Tamer Fouad
123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

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4- Use an index to keep track of addresses

Data File

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt 2349890 Mona

Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt 1210322 Tamer Fouad
123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

Index File

00 47 103 153 … …

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5- Place a delimiter at the end of each record

1202345 Ahmed Hassan 1 Safa street Cairo Egypt 2349890 Mona

Hussein 42 El Thawra street Ismailia Egypt 1210322 Tamer Fouad
123 Ramsis street Cairo Egypt

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