Stratified B-trees and versioning dictionaries
Data Structures and Algorithms
2015-03-19 v2 Databases
Abstract
A classic versioned data structure in storage and computer science is the copy-on-write (CoW) B-tree -- it underlies many of today's file systems and databases, including WAFL, ZFS, Btrfs and more. Unfortunately, it doesn't inherit the B-tree's optimality properties; it has poor space utilization, cannot offer fast updates, and relies on random IO to scale. Yet, nothing better has been developed since. We describe the `stratified B-tree', which beats all known semi-external memory versioned B-trees, including the CoW B-tree. In particular, it is the first versioned dictionary to achieve optimal tradeoffs between space, query and update performance.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1103.4282,
title = {Stratified B-trees and versioning dictionaries},
author = {Andy Twigg and Andrew Byde and Grzegorz Milos and Tim Moreton and John Wilkes and Tom Wilkie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.4282},
year = {2015}
}