Storing Data: Disks and Files

Chapter 9
Yea, from the table of my memory Ill wipe away all trivial fond records. -- Shakespeare, Hamlet

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Disks and Files

DBMS stores information on (hard) disks. This has major implications for DBMS design!

READ: transfer data from disk to main memory (RAM). WRITE: transfer data from RAM to disk. Both are high-cost operations, relative to in-memory operations, so must be planned carefully!

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Why Not Store Everything in Main Memory?

Costs too much. $1000 will buy you either 128MB of RAM or 7.5GB of disk today. Main memory is volatile. We want data to be saved between runs. (Obviously!) Typical storage hierarchy:

Main memory (RAM) for currently used data. Disk for the main database (secondary storage). Tapes for archiving older versions of the data (tertiary storage).
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Disks
Secondary storage device of choice. Main advantage over tapes: random access vs. sequential. Data is stored and retrieved in units called disk blocks or pages. Unlike RAM, time to retrieve a disk page varies depending upon location on disk.

Therefore, relative placement of pages on disk has major impact on DBMS performance!
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Components of a Disk
Disk head

Spindle Tracks

The platters spin (say, 90rps).

Sector

The arm assembly is moved in or out to position a head on a desired track. Tracks under heads make a cylinder (imaginary!). Only one head reads/writes at any one time.

Arm movement

Platters

Block size is a multiple of sector size (which is fixed).

Arm assembly

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Accessing a Disk Page

Time to access (read/write) a disk block:

seek time (moving arms to position disk head on track) rotational delay (waiting for block to rotate under head) transfer time (actually moving data to/from disk surface)
Seek time varies from about 1 to 20msec Rotational delay varies from 0 to 10msec Transfer rate is about 1msec per 4KB page

Seek time and rotational delay dominate.

Key to lower I/O cost: reduce seek/rotation delays! Hardware vs. software solutions?
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Arranging Pages on Disk

`Next block concept:

blocks on same track, followed by blocks on same cylinder, followed by blocks on adjacent cylinder

Blocks in a file should be arranged sequentially on disk (by `next), to minimize seek and rotational delay. For a sequential scan, pre-fetching several pages at a time is a big win!

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RAID
Disk Array: Arrangement of several disks that gives abstraction of a single, large disk. Goals: Increase performance and reliability. Two main techniques:

Data striping: Data is partitioned; size of a partition is called the striping unit. Partitions are distributed over several disks. Redundancy: More disks => more failures. Redundant information allows reconstruction of data if a disk fails.
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

RAID Levels
Level 0: No redundancy Level 1: Mirrored (two identical copies)

Each disk has a mirror image (check disk) Parallel reads, a write involves two disks. Maximum transfer rate = transfer rate of one disk Parallel reads, a write involves two disks. Maximum transfer rate = aggregate bandwidth

Level 0+1: Striping and Mirroring

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

RAID Levels (Contd.)

Level 3: Bit-Interleaved Parity

Striping Unit: One bit. One check disk. Each read and write request involves all disks; disk array can process one request at a time. Striping Unit: One disk block. One check disk. Parallel reads possible for small requests, large requests can utilize full bandwidth Writes involve modified block and check disk Similar to RAID Level 4, but parity blocks are distributed over all disks
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Level 4: Block-Interleaved Parity

Level 5: Block-Interleaved Distributed Parity

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Disk Space Management

Lowest layer of DBMS software manages space on disk. Higher levels call upon this layer to:

allocate/de-allocate a page read/write a page

Request for a sequence of pages must be satisfied by allocating the pages sequentially on disk! Higher levels dont need to know how this is done, or how free space is managed.
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Buffer Management in a DBMS

Page Requests from Higher Levels
BUFFER POOL

disk page
free frame

MAIN MEMORY
DISK

DB

choice of frame dictated by replacement policy

Data must be in RAM for DBMS to operate on it! Table of <frame#, pageid> pairs is maintained.

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When a Page is Requested ...

If requested page is not in pool:

Choose a frame for replacement If frame is dirty, write it to disk Read requested page into chosen frame

Pin the page and return its address.

If requests can be predicted (e.g., sequential scans) pages can be pre-fetched several pages at a time!
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

More on Buffer Management

Requestor of page must unpin it, and indicate whether page has been modified:

dirty bit is used for this.

Page in pool may be requested many times,

a pin count is used. A page is a candidate for replacement iff pin count = 0.

CC & recovery may entail additional I/O when a frame is chosen for replacement. (Write-Ahead Log protocol; more later.)
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Buffer Replacement Policy

Frame is chosen for replacement by a replacement policy:

Least-recently-used (LRU), Clock, MRU etc.

Policy can have big impact on # of I/Os; depends on the access pattern. Sequential flooding: Nasty situation caused by LRU + repeated sequential scans.

# buffer frames < # pages in file means each page request causes an I/O. MRU much better in this situation (but not in all situations, of course).
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

DBMS vs. OS File System

OS does disk space & buffer mgmt: why not let OS manage these tasks? Differences in OS support: portability issues Some limitations, e.g., files cant span disks. Buffer management in DBMS requires ability to:

pin a page in buffer pool, force a page to disk (important for implementing CC & recovery), adjust replacement policy, and pre-fetch pages based on access patterns in typical DB operations.
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Record Formats: Fixed Length

F1
L1

F2
L2

F3
L3

F4
L4

Base address (B)

Address = B+L1+L2

Information about field types same for all records in a file; stored in system catalogs. Finding ith field does not require scan of record.

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Record Formats: Variable Length

Two alternative formats (# fields is fixed):

F1 F2 F3 F4

4
Field Count

Fields Delimited by Special Symbols

F1 F2 F3 F4

Array of Field Offsets * Second offers direct access to ith field, efficient storage of nulls (special dont know value); small directory overhead.
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Page Formats: Fixed Length Records

Slot 1 Slot 2 Slot 1 Slot 2 Free Space Slot N Slot M N PACKED number of records 1 . . . 0 1 1M M ... 3 2 1 UNPACKED, BITMAP number of slots

...
Slot N

...

Record id = <page id, slot #>. In first alternative, moving records for free space management changes rid; may not be acceptable.
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Page Formats: Variable Length Records

Rid = (i,N) Rid = (i,2) Rid = (i,1) Page i

20 N

...

16 2

24 N 1 # slots

SLOT DIRECTORY

Pointer to start of free space

Can move records on page without changing rid; so, attractive for fixed-length records too.
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Files of Records

Page or block is OK when doing I/O, but higher levels of DBMS operate on records, and files of records. FILE: A collection of pages, each containing a collection of records. Must support:

insert/delete/modify record read a particular record (specified using record id) scan all records (possibly with some conditions on the records to be retrieved)
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Unordered (Heap) Files

Simplest file structure contains records in no particular order. As file grows and shrinks, disk pages are allocated and de-allocated. To support record level operations, we must:

keep track of the pages in a file keep track of free space on pages keep track of the records on a page

There are many alternatives for keeping track of this.

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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Heap File Implemented as a List

Data Page
Header Page

Data Page

Data Page

Full Pages

Data Page

Data Page

Data Page

Pages with Free Space

The header page id and Heap file name must be stored someplace. Each page contains 2 `pointers plus data.

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Heap File Using a Page Directory

Header Page Data Page 1

Data Page 2

DIRECTORY

Data Page N

The entry for a page can include the number of free bytes on the page. The directory is a collection of pages; linked list implementation is just one alternative.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Much smaller than linked list of all HF pages!

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System Catalogs

For each index:

structure (e.g., B+ tree) and search key fields name, file name, file structure (e.g., Heap file) attribute name and type, for each attribute index name, for each index integrity constraints

For each relation:

For each view:

view name and definition

Plus statistics, authorization, buffer pool size, etc. * Catalogs are themselves stored as relations!
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Attr_Cat(attr_name, rel_name, type, position)

attr_name attr_name rel_name type position sid name login age gpa fid fname sal rel_name Attribute_Cat Attribute_Cat Attribute_Cat Attribute_Cat Students Students Students Students Students Faculty Faculty Faculty type string string string integer string string string integer real string string real position 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3
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Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Summary

Disks provide cheap, non-volatile storage.

Random access, but cost depends on location of page on disk; important to arrange data sequentially to minimize seek and rotation delays.
Page stays in RAM until released by requestor. Written to disk when frame chosen for replacement (which is sometime after requestor releases the page). Choice of frame to replace based on replacement policy. Tries to pre-fetch several pages at a time.
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Buffer manager brings pages into RAM.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Summary (Contd.)

DBMS vs. OS File Support

DBMS needs features not found in many OSs, e.g., forcing a page to disk, controlling the order of page writes to disk, files spanning disks, ability to control pre-fetching and page replacement policy based on predictable access patterns, etc.

Variable length record format with field offset directory offers support for direct access to ith field and null values. Slotted page format supports variable length records and allows records to move on page.

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Summary (Contd.)

File layer keeps track of pages in a file, and supports abstraction of a collection of records.

Pages with free space identified using linked list or directory structure (similar to how pages in file are kept track of).

Indexes support efficient retrieval of records based on the values in some fields. Catalog relations store information about relations, indexes and views. (Information that is common to all records in a given collection.)

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