Study Session 1: Physical Storage Media and Tertiary Storage Devices

Section and Subsection Headings

Introduction

1.0 Learning Outcome

2. 0 Main Content
2. 1 Physical Storage Media and Tertiary Storage Devices

3.0 Conclusion/Summary
4.0 Self-Assessment Questions
5.0 Additional Activities (Videos, Animations & out of Class Activities)
6.0 Reference/Further Reading

Introduction
The collection of data that makes up a computerized database must be stored physically on some computer

storage medium. The DBMS software can then retrieve, update, and process this data as needed. Computer

storage media form a storage hierarchy that includes two main categories: primary storage and secondary

and tertiary storage

1.0 Learning Outcome

At the end of this study session, the students should be able to:

a) Identify Primary Storage Media and Tertiary Storage Devices

b) Describe physical Storage devices
c) Describe Memory Hierarchies and Storage Devices

d) Explain Storage of Databases

2.0 Main Content

2.1 Physical Storage Media and Tertiary Storage Devices

The process of physical database design involves choosing the particular data organization techniques that

best suit the given application requirements from among the options. DBMS system implementers must

study data organization techniques so that they can implement them efficiently and thus provide the DBA

and users of the DBMS with sufficient options. Typical database applications need only a small portion of

the database at a time for procesing. Whenever a certain portion of the data is needed, it must be located

on disk, copied to main memory for processing, and then rewritten to the disk if the data is changed. The

data stored on disk is organized as files of records. Each record is a collection of data values that can be

interpreted as facts about entities, their attributes, and their relationships. Records should be stored on disk

in a manner that makes it possible to locate them efficiently when they are needed.

■ Primary storage. This category includes storage media that can be operated on directly by the

computer’s central processing unit (CPU), such as the computer’s main memory and smaller but faster

cache memories. Primary storage usually provides fast access to data but is of limited storage capacity.

Although main memory capacities have been growing rapidly in recent years, they are still more expensive

and have less storage capacity than secondary and tertiary storage devices.

■ Secondary and tertiary storage. This category includes magnetic disks, optical disks (CD-ROMs,

DVDs, and other similar storage media), and tapes. Hard-disk drives are classified as secondary storage,

whereas removable media such as optical disks and tapes are considered tertiary storage. These devices

usually have a larger capacity, cost less, and provide slower access to data than do primary storage devices.

Data in secondary or tertiary storage cannot be processed directly by the CPU; first it must be copied into

primary storage and then processed by the CPU.

We first give an overview of the various storage devices used for primary and secondary storage, and then

discuss how databases are typically handled in the storage hierarchy.

2.1.1 Memory Hierarchies and Storage Devices
In a modern computer system, data resides and is transported throughout a hierarchy of storage media. The

highest-speed memory is the most expensive and is therefore available with the least capacity. The lowest-

speed memory is offline tape storage, which is essentially available in indefinite storage capacity.

At the primary storage level, the memory hierarchy includes at the most expensive end, cache memory,

which is a static RAM (Random Access Memory). Cache memory is typically used by the CPU to speed

up execution of program instructions using techniques such as prefetching and pipelining. The next level

of primary storage is DRAM (Dynamic RAM),which provides the main work area for the CPU for keeping

program instructions and data. It is popularly called main memory. The advantage of DRAM is its low cost,

which continues to decrease; the drawback is its volatility1 and lower speed compared with static RAM .At

the secondary and tertiary storage level, the hierarchy includes magnetic disks, as well as mass storage in

the form of CD-ROM (Compact Disk–Read-Only Memory) and DVD (Digital Video Disk or Digital

Versatile Disk) devices, and finally tapes at the least expensive end of the hierarchy. The storage capacity

is measured in kilobytes (Kbyte or 1000 bytes), megabytes (MB or 1 million bytes), gigabytes (GB or 1

billion bytes), and even terabytes (1000 GB). The word petabyte (1000 terabytes or 10**15 bytes) is now

becoming relevant in the context of very large repositories of data in physics, astronomy, earth sciences,

and other scientific applications.

Programs reside and execute in DRAM. Generally, large permanent databases reside on secondary storage,

(magnetic disks), and portions of the database are read into and written from buffers in main memory as

needed. Nowadays, personal computers and workstations have large main memories of hundreds of

megabytes of RAM and DRAM, so it is becoming possible to load a large part of the database into main

memory. Eight to 16 GB of main memory on a single server is becoming commonplace. In some cases,

entire databases can be kept in main memory (with a backup copy on magnetic disk), leading to main

memory databases; these are particularly useful in real-time applications that require extremely fast

response times. An example is telephone switching applications, which store databases that contain routing
and line information in main memory. Between DRAM and magnetic disk storage, another form of

memory, flash memory, is becoming common, particularly because it is nonvolatile. Flash memories are

high-density, high-performance memories using EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-

Only Memory) technology. The advantage of flash memory is the fast access speed; the disadvantage is

that an entire block must be erased and written over simultaneously. Flash memory cards are appearing as

the data storage medium in appliances with capacities ranging from a few megabytes to a few gigabytes.

These are appearing in cameras, MP3 players, cell phones, PDAs, and so on. USB (Universal Serial Bus)

flash drives have become the most portable medium for carrying data between personal computers; they

have a flash memory storage device integrated with a USB interface. CD-ROM (Compact Disk – Read

Only Memory) disks store data optically and are read by a laser. CD-ROMs contain prerecorded data that

cannot be overwritten. WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) disks are a form of optical storage used for

archiving data; they allow data to be written once and read any number of times without the possibility of

erasing. They hold about half a gigabyte of data per disk and last much longer than magnetic disks.2 Optical

jukebox memories use an array of CD-ROM platters, which are loaded onto drives on demand. Although

optical jukeboxes have capacities in the hundreds of gigabytes, their retrieval times are in the hundreds of

milliseconds, quite a bit slower than magnetic disks. This type of storage is continuing to decline because

of the rapid decrease in cost and increase in capacities of magnetic disks. The DVD is another standard for

optical disks allowing 4.5 to 15 GB of storage per disk. Most personal computer disk drives now read

CDROM and DVD disks. Typically, drives are CD-R (Compact Disk Recordable) that can create CD-

ROMs and audio CDs (Compact Disks), as well as record on DVDs. Finally, magnetic tapes are used for

archiving and backup storage of data. Tape jukeboxes—which contain a bank of tapes that are catalogued

and can be automatically loaded onto tape drives—are becoming popular as tertiary storage to hold

terabytes of data. For example, NASA’s EOS (Earth Observation Satellite) system stores archived databases

in this fashion. Many large organizations are already finding it normal to have terabyte-sized databases.

The term very large database can no longer be precisely defined because disk storage capacities are on the

rise and costs are declining. Very soon the term may be reserved for databases containing tens of terabytes
 1.1.2 Storage of Databases
Databases typically store large amounts of data that must persist over long periods of time, and hence is

often referred to as persistent data. Parts of this data are accessed and processed repeatedly during this

period. This contrasts with the notion of transient data that persist for only a limited time during program

execution. Most databases are stored permanently (or persistently) on magnetic disk secondary storage, for

the following reasons:

■ Generally, databases are too large to fit entirely in main memory.

■ The circumstances that cause permanent loss of stored data arise less frequently for disk secondary storage

than for primary storage. Hence, we refer to disk—and other secondary storage devices—as nonvolatile

storage, whereas main memory is often called volatile storage.

■ The cost of storage per unit of data is an order of magnitude less for disk secondary storage than for

primary storage. Some of the newer technologies—such as optical disks, DVDs, and tape jukeboxes—are

likely to provide viable alternatives to the use of magnetic disks. In the future, databases may therefore

reside at different levels of the memory hierarchy. However, it is anticipated that magnetic disks will

continue to be the primary medium of choice for large databases for years to come. Hence, it is important

to study and understand the properties and characteristics of magnetic disks and the way data files can be

organized on disk in order to design effective databases with acceptable performance. Magnetic tapes are

frequently used as a storage medium for backing up databases because storage on tape costs even less than

storage on disk. However, access to data on tape is quite slow. Data stored on tapes is offline; that is, some

intervention by an operator—or an automatic loading device—to load a tape is needed before the data

becomes available. In contrast, disks are online devices that can be accessed directly at any time. The

techniques used to store large amounts of structured data on disk are important for database designers, the

DBA, and implementers of a DBMS. Database designers and the DBA must know the advantages and
disadvantages of each storage technique when they design, implement, and operate a database on a specific

DBMS. Usually, the DBMS has several options available for organizing the data. The process of physical

database design involves choosing the particular data organization techniques that best suit the given

application requirements from among the options. DBMS system implementers must study data

organization techniques so that they can implement them efficiently and thus provide the DBA and users

of the DBMS with sufficient options. Typical database applications need only a small portion of the

database at a time for procesing. Whenever a certain portion of the data is needed, it must be located on

disk, copied to main memory for processing, and then rewritten to the disk if the data is changed. The data

stored on disk is organized as files of records. Each record is a collection of data values that can be

interpreted as facts about entities, their attributes, and their relationships. Records should be stored on disk

in a manner that makes it possible to locate them efficiently when they are needed. There are several

primary file organizations, which determine how the file records are physically placed on the disk, and

hence how the records can be accessed. A heap file (or unordered file) places the records on disk in no

particular order by appending new records at the end of the file, whereas a sorted file (or sequential file)

keeps the records ordered by the value of a particular field (called the sort key). A hashed file uses a hash

function applied to a particular field (called the hash key) to determine a record’s placement on disk. Other

primary file organizations, such as B-trees, use tree structures. A secondary organization or auxiliary

access structure allows efficient access to file records based on alternate fields than those that have been

used for the primary file organization.

3.0 Conclusion/Summary

In particular, we focused on magnetic disks because they are used most often to store online database files.

Data on disk is stored in blocks; accessing a disk block is expensive because of the seek time, rotational

delay, and block transfer time. To reduce the average block access time, double buffering can be used when

accessing consecutive disk blocks. We presented different ways of storing file records on disk. File records

are grouped into disk blocks and can be fixed length or variable length, spanned or unspanned, and of the
 same record type or mixed types. We discussed the file header, which describes the record formats and

keeps track of the disk addresses of the file blocks. Information in the file header is used by system software

accessing the file records.

In-text Questions
List At least three examples of secondary starage devices
In-text Answer
magnetic disks, optical disks (CD-ROMs, DVDs,

2.0 Self-Assessment Questions

1. What is the difference between primary and secondary storage?

2. Why are disks, not tapes, used to store online database files?

3. Define the following terms: disk, disk pack, track, block, cylinder, sector, interblock gap, read/write
head.

5.0 Additional Activities (Videos, Animations & out of Class Activities)

5.0 Additional Activities

Visit you-tube add on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR0jg0eQsZA Watch the video on

Different storage hierarchies

6.0 Reference/Further Reading

UNESCO-NIGERIA TECHNICAL & VOCATIONAL EDUCATION REVITALISATION PROJECT-

PHASE II. (2008). DATABASE DESIGN 1 COURSE CODE: COM322. December, 1–86.
Fundamentals of Database Systems by Ramez Elmasri and Shamkat B. Navathe six ditions