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Options in physical database design

Published:01 September 1993Publication History
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Abstract

A cornerstone of modern database systems is physical data independence, i.e., the separation of a type and its associated operations from its physical representation in memory and on storage media. Users manipulate and query data at the logical level; the DBMS translates these logical operations to operations on files, indices, records, and disks. The efficiency of these physical operations depends very much on the choice of data representations.

Choosing a physical representation for a logical database is called physical database design. The number of possible choices in physical database design is very large; moreover, they very often interact with each other. We attempt to list and classify these choices and to explore their interactions. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of possible options to the DBMS developer and some guidance to the DBMS administrator and user.

While much of our discussion will draw on the relational data model, physical database design is of even more importance for object-oriented and extensible systems. The reasons are simple: First, the number of logical data types and their operations is larger, requiring and permitting more choices for their representation. Second, the state of the art in query optimization for these systems is much less developed than for relational systems, making careful physical database design even more imperative for object-oriented database systems.

References

  1. [Bab82] E. Babb, Joined Normal Form: A Storage Encoding for Relational Databases, ACM Trans. on Database Sys. 7, 4 (December 1982), 588. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. [BaM72] R. Bayer and E. McCreighton, Organisation and Maintenance of Large Ordered Indices, Acta Informatica 1, 3 (1972), 173.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. [Ben75] J. L. Bentley, Multidimensional Binary Search Trees Used for Associative Searching, Comm. of the ACM 18, 9 (September 1975), 509. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. [BeK89] E. Benino and W. Kim, Indexing Techniques for Queries on Nested Objects, IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Eng. 1, 2 (June 1989), 196. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

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          cover image ACM SIGMOD Record
          ACM SIGMOD Record  Volume 22, Issue 3
          Sept. 1993
          98 pages
          ISSN:0163-5808
          DOI:10.1145/163090
          Issue’s Table of Contents

          Copyright © 1993 Author

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          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 1 September 1993

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