Online B-tree Merging

Many scenarios involve merging of two B-tree indexes, both covering the same key range. Increasing demand for continuous availability and high performance requires that such merging be done online, with minimal interference to normal user transactions. In this paper we present an online B-tree merging method, in which the merging of leaf pages in two B-trees are piggybacked lazily with normal user transactions, thus making the merging I/O efficient and allowing user transactions to access only one index instead of both. The concurrency control mechanism is designed to interfere as little as possible with ongoing user transactions. Merging is made forward recoverable by following a conventional logging protocol, with a few extensions. Should a system failure occur, both indexes being merged can be recovered to a consistent state and no merging work is lost. Experiments and analysis show the I/O savings and the performance, and compare variations on the basic algorithm.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SIGMOD
• Authors: Xiaowei Sun, Rui Wang 0002, Betty Salzberg, Chendong Zou
• Keywords: B-tree Merging Method, Database, Normal User Transactions, Ongoing User Transactions, SIGMOD 2005