Implementation of B-Trees Using Dynamic Address Computation

Hartson, H. Rex and West, Raymond T. (1990) Implementation of B-Trees Using Dynamic Address Computation. Technical Report TR-90-37, Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Abstract

The B-tree is probably the most popular method in use today for indexes and inverted files in database management systems. The traditional implementation for a B-tree uses many pointers (more than one per key), and which can directly affect the performance of the B-tree. A general method of file organization and access (called Dynamic Address Computation) has been described by Cook that can be used to implement B-trees using no pointers. A minimal amount of storage (in addition to the keys) is required. This paper gives a detailed description of Direct Address Computation and the resulting system is analyzed, leading to the conclusion that, while the approach results in a simple implementation of B-trees, more work is required to achieve performance for large B-trees.