Indexing

1
 Basic Concepts
 Indexing mechanisms used to speed up access to
desired data.
 E.g., author catalog in library
 Search Key - attribute or set of attributes used to look up
records in a file.
 An index file consists of records (called index entries) of
the form search-key pointer

 Index files are typically much smaller than the original

file
 Two basic kinds of indices:
 Ordered indices: search keys are stored in sorted
order
 Hash indices: search keys are distributed uniformly
across “buckets” using a “hash function”.
2
 Index Evaluation Metrics
 Access types supported efficiently. E.g.,
 records with a specified value in the attribute
 or records with an attribute value falling in a
specified range of values.
 Access time
 Insertion time
 Deletion time
 Space overhead

3
 Ordered Indices

 In an ordered index, index entries are stored sorted on the

search key value. E.g., author catalog in library.
 Primary index: in a sequentially ordered file, the index
whose search key specifies the sequential order of the
file.
 Also called clustering index
 The search key of a primary index is usually but not
necessarily the primary key.
 Secondary index: an index whose search key specifies an
order different from the sequential order of the file. Also
called
non-clustering index.
 Index-sequential file: ordered sequential file with a
primary index.

4
 Dense Index Files
 Dense index — Index record appears for every
search-key value in the file.
 E.g. index on ID attribute of instructor relation

5
 Dense Index Files (Cont.)
 Dense index on dept_name, with instructor file
sorted on dept_name

6
 Sparse Index Files
 Sparse Index: contains index records for only some
search-key values.
 Applicable when records are sequentially ordered on
search-key
 To locate a record with search-key value K we:
 Find index record with largest search-key value < K
 Search file sequentially starting at the record to
which the index record points

7
 Sparse Index Files (Cont.)
 Compared to dense indices:
 Less space and less maintenance overhead for
insertions and deletions.
 Generally slower than dense index for locating
records.
 Good tradeoff: sparse index with an index entry for every
block in file, corresponding to least search-key value in
the block.

8
 Secondary Indices Example

Secondary index on salary field of instructor

 Index record points to a bucket that contains pointers to all

the actual records with that particular search-key value.
 Secondary indices have to be dense

9
 Primary and Secondary Indices
 Indices offer substantial benefits when searching
for records.
 BUT: Updating indices imposes overhead on
database modification --when a file is modified,
every index on the file must be updated,
 Sequential scan using primary index is efficient,
but a sequential scan using a secondary index is
expensive
 Each record access may fetch a new block from
disk
 Block fetch requires about 5 to 10 milliseconds,
versus about 100 nanoseconds for memory
access

10
 Multilevel Index
 If primary index does not fit in memory, access
becomes expensive.
 Solution: treat primary index kept on disk as a
sequential file and construct a sparse index on it.
 outer index – a sparse index of primary index
 inner index – the primary index file
 If even outer index is too large to fit in main
memory, yet another level of index can be created,
and so on.
 Indices at all levels must be updated on insertion
or deletion from the file.

11
Multilevel Index (Cont.)

12
 Index Update: Deletion

 If deleted record was the

only record in the file with
its particular search-key
value, the search-key is
deleted from the index also.

 Single-level index entry deletion:

 Dense indices – deletion of search-key is similar to file
record deletion.
 Sparse indices –
 if an entry for the search key exists in the index, it is
deleted by replacing the entry in the index with the
next search-key value in the file (in search-key
order).
 If the next search-key value already has an index
entry, the entry is deleted instead of being
13replaced.
 Index Update: Insertion
 Single-level index insertion:
 Perform a lookup using the search-key value
appearing in the record to be inserted.
 Dense indices – if the search-key value does not
appear in the index, insert it.
 Sparse indices – if index stores an entry for
each block of the file, no change needs to be
made to the index unless a new block is
created.
 Ifa new block is created, the first search-key
value appearing in the new block is inserted
into the index.
 Multilevel insertion and deletion: algorithms are
simple extensions of the single-level algorithms

14
 Secondary Indices
 Frequently, one wants to find all the records
whose values in a certain field (which is not the
search-key of the primary index) satisfy some
condition.
 Example 1: In the instructor relation stored
sequentially by ID, we may want to find all
instructors in a particular department
 Example 2: as above, but where we want to
find all instructors with a specified salary or
with salary in a specified range of values
 We can have a secondary index with an index
record for each search-key value

15
 B+-Tree Index Files

B+-tree indices are an alternative to indexed-sequential files.

 Disadvantage of indexed-sequential files
 performance degrades as file grows, since many
overflow blocks get created.
 Periodic reorganization of entire file is required.
 Advantage of B+-tree index files:
 automatically reorganizes itself with small, local,
changes, in the face of insertions and deletions.
 Reorganization of entire file is not required to
maintain performance.
 (Minor) disadvantage of B +-trees:
 extra insertion and deletion overhead, space
overhead.
 Advantages of B+-trees outweigh disadvantages
 B+-trees are used extensively

16
Example of B+-Tree

17
 B+-Tree Index Files (Cont.)

A B+-tree is a rooted tree satisfying the following properties:

 All paths from root to leaf are of the same

length
 Each node that is not a root or a leaf has
between n/2 and n children.
 A leaf node has between (n–1)/2 and n–1
values
 Special cases:
 If the root is not a leaf, it has at least 2
children.
 If the root is a leaf (that is, there are no other
nodes in the tree), it can have between 0 and
(n–1) values.

18
 B+-Tree Node Structure
 Typical node

 Ki are the search-key values

 Pi are pointers to children (for non-leaf nodes) or
pointers to records or buckets of records (for
leaf nodes).
 The search-keys in a node are ordered

K1 < K2 < K3 < . . . < Kn–1

(Initially assume no duplicate keys, address
duplicates later)

19
 Leaf Nodes in B+-Trees

Properties of a leaf node:

 For i = 1, 2, . . ., n–1, pointer Pi points to a file record
with search-key value Ki,
 If Li, Lj are leaf nodes and i < j, Li’s search-key values
are less than or equal to Lj’s search-key values
 Pn points to next leaf node in search-key order

20
 Non-Leaf Nodes in B+-Trees
 Non leaf nodes form a multi-level sparse index on
the leaf nodes. For a non-leaf node with m
pointers:
 All the search-keys in the subtree to which P1
points are less than K1
 For 2  i  n – 1, all the search-keys in the
subtree to which Pi points have values greater
than or equal to Ki–1 and less than Ki
 All the search-keys in the subtree to which Pn
points have values greater than or equal to Kn–1

21
 Example of B+-tree

B+-tree for instructor file (n = 6)

 Leaf nodes must have between 3 and 5 values

((n–1)/2 and n –1, with n = 6).
 Non-leaf nodes other than root must have
between 3 and 6 children ((n/2 and n with n =6).
 Root must have at least 2 children.

22
 Observations about B+-trees
 Since the inter-node connections are done by pointers,
“logically” close blocks need not be “physically” close.
 The non-leaf levels of the B+-tree form a hierarchy of
sparse indices.
 The B+-tree contains a relatively small number of levels
 Level below root has at least 2* n/2 values
 Next level has at least 2* n/2 * n/2 values
 .. etc.
 If there are K search-key values in the file, the tree
height is no more than  logn/2(K)
 thus searches can be conducted efficiently.
 Insertions and deletions to the main file can be
handled efficiently, as the index can be restructured in
logarithmic time (as we shall see).

23
 Updates on B+-Trees: Insertion
1. Find the leaf node in which the search-key value
would appear
2. If the search-key value is already present in the leaf
node
1. Add record to the file
2. If necessary add a pointer to the bucket.
3. If the search-key value is not present, then
1. add the record to the main file (and create a
bucket if necessary)
2. If there is room in the leaf node, insert (key-
value, pointer) pair in the leaf node
3. Otherwise, split the node (along with the new
(key-value, pointer) entry) as discussed in the
next slide.

24
 Updates on B +-Trees: Insertion
(Cont.)
 Splitting a leaf node:
 take the n (search-key value, pointer) pairs (including
the one being inserted) in sorted order. Place the
first n/2 in the original node, and the rest in a new
node.
 let the new node be p, and let k be the least key
value in p. Insert (k,p) in the parent of the node being
split.
 If the parent is full, split it and propagate the split
further up.
 Splitting of nodes proceeds upwards till a node that is
not full is found.
 In the worst case the root node may be split
increasing the height of the tree by 1.

Result of splitting node containing Brandt, Califieri and Crick on

inserting Adams
Next step: insert entry with (Califieri,pointer-to-new-node) into
parent 25
 B+-Tree Insertion

B+-Tree before and after insertion of “Adams”

26
 B+-Tree Insertion

B+-Tree before and after insertion of “Lamport”

27
 Insertion in B+-Trees (Cont.)
 Splitting a non-leaf node: when inserting (k,p) into an
already full internal node N
 Copy N to an in-memory area M with space for n+1
pointers and n keys
 Insert (k,p) into M
 Copy P1,K1, …, K n/2-1 ,P n/2 from M back into node N
 Copy Pn/2+1,K n/2+1,…,Kn,Pn+1 from M into newly
allocated node N’
 Insert (K n/2,N’) into parent N
 Read pseudocode in book!
Califieri

Adams Brandt Califieri Crick Adams Brandt Crick

28
 Examples of B+-Tree Deletion

Before and after deleting “Srinivasan”

 Deleting “Srinivasan” causes merging of under-full leaves

29
 Examples of B +-Tree Deletion
(Cont.)

Deletion of “Singh” and “Wu” from result of

previous example

 Leaf containing Singh and Wu became underfull, and

borrowed a value Kim from its left sibling
 Search-key value in the parent changes as a result

30
 Example of B+-tree Deletion (Cont.)

Before and after deletion of “Gold” from earlier example

 Node with Gold and Katz became underfull, and was merged with its
sibling
 Parent node becomes underfull, and is merged with its sibling
Value separating two nodes (at the parent) is pulled down when

merging
31
 Root node then has only one child, and is deleted
 Updates on B+-Trees: Deletion
 Find the record to be deleted, and remove it from the
main file and from the bucket (if present)
 Remove (search-key value, pointer) from the leaf node if
there is no bucket or if the bucket has become empty
 If the node has too few entries due to the removal, and
the entries in the node and a sibling fit into a single
node, then merge siblings:
 Insert all the search-key values in the two nodes into
a single node (the one on the left), and delete the
other node.
 Delete the pair (Ki–1, Pi), where Pi is the pointer to the
deleted node, from its parent, recursively using the
above procedure.

32
 Updates on B+-Trees: Deletion
 Otherwise, if the node has too few entries due to the
removal, but the entries in the node and a sibling do not
fit into a single node, then redistribute pointers:
 Redistribute the pointers between the node and a
sibling such that both have more than the minimum
number of entries.
 Update the corresponding search-key value in the
parent of the node.
 The node deletions may cascade upwards till a node
which has n/2 or more pointers is found.
 If the root node has only one pointer after deletion, it is
deleted and the sole child becomes the root.

33