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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 1–5Cite as

B+-Tree

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Synonyms

B-tree

Definition

The B+-tree is a disk-based, paginated, dynamically updateable, balanced, and treelike index structure. It supports the exact match query as well as insertion/deletion operations in O(log p n) I/Os, where n is the number of records in the tree and p is the page capacity in number of records. It also supports the range searches in O(log p n + t∕p) I/Os, where t is the number of records in the query result.

Historical Background

The binary search tree is a well-known data structure. When the data volume is so large that the tree does not fit in main memory, a disk-based search tree is necessary. The most commonly used disk-based search trees are the B-tree and its variations. Originally invented by Bayer and McCreight [2], the B-tree may be regarded as an extension of the balanced binary tree, since a B-tree is always balanced (i.e., all leaf nodes are on the same level). Since each disk access retrieves or updates an entire block of information between memory...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Bayer R. The universal B-tree for multidimensional indexing: general concepts. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Worldwide Computing and Its Applications (WWCA); 1997. p. 198–209.

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  2. Bayer R, McCreight EM. Organization and maintenance of large ordered indices. Acta Inf. 1972;1:173–89.

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  3. Comer D. The ubiquitous B-tree. ACM Comput Surv. 1979;11(2):121–37.

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  4. Knuth D. The art of computer programming. Sorting and searching, vol. 3. Reading: Addison Wesley; 1973.

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  5. Robinson JT. K-D-B tree: a search structure for large multidimensional dynamic indexes. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data; 1981. p. 10–8.

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  6. Srinivasan V, Carey MJ. Performance of B+ tree concurrency algorithms. VLDB J. 1993;2(4):361–406.

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  7. Theodoridis Y. The R-tree-portal. 2003. http://www.rtreeportal.org

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paradigm4, Inc, Waltham, MA, USA

    Donghui Zhang

  2. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Kenneth Paul Baclawski

  3. University of California-Riverside, Riverside, MA, USA

    Vassilis J. Tsotras

Authors
  1. Donghui Zhang
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  2. Kenneth Paul Baclawski
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  3. Vassilis J. Tsotras
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Donghui Zhang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Vassilis J. Tsotras

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Zhang, D., Baclawski, K.P., Tsotras, V.J. (2017). B+-Tree. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_739-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_739-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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