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Indexing: Practice Exercises

This document summarizes chapter 14 on indexing from a database textbook. It provides 15 practice exercises related to indexing with B-trees and bitmaps. It discusses creating and modifying B-tree structures for different node sizes and operations like insertion, deletion. It also covers bitmap indexing, write-optimized indexing, and using multiple region queries to find nearest neighbors in a spatial database.

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Divyanshu Bose
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732 views

Indexing: Practice Exercises

This document summarizes chapter 14 on indexing from a database textbook. It provides 15 practice exercises related to indexing with B-trees and bitmaps. It discusses creating and modifying B-tree structures for different node sizes and operations like insertion, deletion. It also covers bitmap indexing, write-optimized indexing, and using multiple region queries to find nearest neighbors in a spatial database.

Uploaded by

Divyanshu Bose
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CHAPTER

14
Indexing

Solutions for the Practice Exercises of Chapter 14

Practice Exercises

14.1 Indices speed query processing, but it is usually a bad idea to create indices on
every attribute, and every combination of attributes, that are potential search
keys. Explain why.
14.2 Is it possible in general to have two clustering indices on the same relation for
different search keys? Explain your answer.
14.3 Construct a B+ -tree for the following set of key values:

(2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31)

Assume that the tree is initially empty and values are added in ascending order.
Construct B+ -trees for the cases where the number of pointers that will fit in
one node is as follows:
a. Four
b. Six
c. Eight
14.4 For each B+ -tree of Exercise 14.3, show the form of the tree after each of the
following series of operations:
a. Insert 9.
b. Insert 10.
c. Insert 8.
d. Delete 23.
47
48 Chapter 14 Indexing

e. Delete 19.

14.5 Consider the modified redistribution scheme for B+ -trees described on page
651. What is the expected height of the tree as a function of n?
14.6 Give pseudocode for a B+ -tree function findRangeIterator(), which is like the
function findRange(), except that it returns an iterator object, as described
in Section 14.3.2. Also give pseudocode for the iterator class, including the
variables in the iterator object, and the next() method.
14.7 What would the occupancy of each leaf node of a B+ -tree be if index entries
were inserted in sorted order? Explain why.
14.8 Suppose you have a relation r with nr tuples on which a secondary B+ -tree is
to be constructed.

a. Give a formula for the cost of building the B+ -tree index by inserting one
record at a time. Assume each block will hold an average of f entries and
that all levels of the tree above the leaf are in memory.
b. Assuming a random disk access takes 10 milliseconds, what is the cost
of index construction on a relation with 10 million records?
c. Write pseudocode for bottom-up construction of a B+ -tree, which was
outlined in Section 14.4.4. You can assume that a function to efficiently
sort a large file is available.

14.9 The leaf nodes of a B+ -tree file organization may lose sequentiality after a se-
quence of inserts.

a. Explain why sequentiality may be lost.


b. To minimize the number of seeks in a sequential scan, many databases
allocate leaf pages in extents of n blocks, for some reasonably large n.
When the first leaf of a B+ -tree is allocated, only one block of an n-block
unit is used, and the remaining pages are free. If a page splits, and its
n-block unit has a free page, that space is used for the new page. If the
n-block unit is full, another n-block unit is allocated, and the first n∕2 leaf
pages are placed in one n-block unit and the remaining one in the second
n-block unit. For simplicity, assume that there are no delete operations.
i. What is the worst-case occupancy of allocated space, assuming no
delete operations, after the first n-block unit is full?
ii. Is it possible that leaf nodes allocated to an n-node block unit are not
consecutive, that is, is it possible that two leaf nodes are allocated
to one n-node block, but another leaf node in between the two is
allocated to a different n-node block?
Practice Exercises 49

iii. Under the reasonable assumption that buffer space is sufficient to


store an n-page block, how many seeks would be required for a leaf-
level scan of the B+ -tree, in the worst case? Compare this number
with the worst case if leaf pages are allocated a block at a time.
iv. The technique of redistributing values to siblings to improve space
utilization is likely to be more efficient when used with the preceding
allocation scheme for leaf blocks. Explain why.
14.10 Suppose you are given a database schema and some queries that are executed
frequently. How would you use the above information to decide what indices
to create?
14.11 In write-optimized trees such as the LSM tree or the stepped-merge index, en-
tries in one level are merged into the next level only when the level is full.
Suggest how this policy can be changed to improve read performance during
periods when there are many reads but no updates.
14.12 What trade offs do buffer trees pose as compared to LSM trees?
14.13 Consider the instructor relation shown in Figure 14.1.
a. Construct a bitmap index on the attribute salary, dividing salary values
into four ranges: below 50,000, 50,000 to below 60,000, 60,000 to below
70,000, and 70,000 and above.
b. Consider a query that requests all instructors in the Finance department
with salary of 80,000 or more. Outline the steps in answering the query,
and show the final and intermediate bitmaps constructed to answer the
query.
14.14 Suppose you have a relation containing the x, y coordinates and names of
restaurants. Suppose also that the only queries that will be asked are of the
following form: The query specifies a point and asks if there is a restaurant ex-
actly at that point. Which type of index would be preferable, R-tree or B-tree?
Why?
14.15 Suppose you have a spatial database that supports region queries with circular
regions, but not nearest-neighbor queries. Describe an algorithm to find the
nearest neighbor by making use of multiple region queries.

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