Physical database design aspects of relational dbms implementations

摘要

There are no standards for storage structures in relational DBMSs (RDBMSs). RDBMS-implementors can choose from the whole variety of structures and decide which options and parameters the physical database designer should have. RDBMSs provide non-procedural, set-oriented query languages. The generation of access plans is automatically done by the RDBMS; programers cannot explicitly control the use of access paths. Yet an appropriate access path configuration has to be supplied by the physical database designer in order to run the application programs efficiently.In this paper general deficiencies and advantages of RDBMSs are exhibited, implementation details affecting physical database design decisions are highlighted, four sample commercial systems are reviewed in some detail, and general conclusions for physical design in RDBMSs are drawn.