Organization of Records in Files

There are several ways of organizing records in files.

• heap file organization. Any record can be placed anywhere in the file where there is space for the record. There is no ordering of records.
• sequential file organization. Records are stored in sequential order, based on the value of the search key of each record.
• hashing file organization. A hash function is computed on some attribute of each record. The result of the function specifies in which block of the file the record should be placed -- to be discussed in chapter 11 since it is closely related to the indexing structure.
• clustering file organization. Records of several different relations can be stored in the same file. Related records of the different relations are stored on the same block so that one I/O operation fetches related records from all the relations.

• Sequential File Organization
• Clustering File Organization