Basic Direct Access Method (BDAM) Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

As more data was being stored on disks, the direct access technique began to become more popular.  Unlike physical sequential, the BDAM (pronounced bee-damn) method uses a symbolic key, (which is usually a part of the record that is being stored) The BDAM hashing algorithm will compute the target location of the record on the disk and then tell the access method to get the record at that location.  Since we can go directly to the record, BDAM provides much faster access and retrieval of records.  A direct access file is sometimes called a “keyed” file because the key is used to generate the disk address (Figure 2-2).

Figure 2-2 Hashed file storage

Just as your home address uniquely identifies where you live, a disk address identifies where a record lives on the device.  A disk address includes the disk number, cylinder address, the track, and the block address.  To find a record in a direct access file, the program must have a key provided so that  it can determine the record address and then retrieve the desired record, regardless of all the other records in the file.  This was the first time that there had been a separation between the physical access methods and the logical access methods.  That is, the record could be retrieved simply by providing the key field, and the user need not be concerned with where the record was physically located on the disk.

Unfortunately, the range of addresses which were generated by the hashing algorithm required careful management. A hashing algorithm has to be repeatable, in that the same key always returns the same disk address.  BDAM has to be able to store a record with the hashing algorithm and be able to retrieve the record using the same algorithm.

Of course, duplicate keys must be avoided.  The duplication of disk addresses leads to “collisions” whereby the hashing algorithm cannot differentiate between two records.  Hence, it is critical that a unique key be created for each and every record in the file.  If a single field cannot uniquely identify the records, then a combination of fields or portions of fields can be used.  Ever see the code on a magazine subscription label?  These are called “concatenated” keys, and they contain pieces of fields in the base record, such as the first four letters of the subscriber’s last name, and a portion of the zip code.  Fortunately, there are many ways to generate unique keys. 

BDAM file structures also consume a large amount of disk storage. BDAM files do not make efficient use of disk storage since records are randomly distributed across the disk device.  Consequently, it is common to see hashed files with more unused spaces than occupied space see Figure 2-3.

Figure 2-3 The random distribution of BDAM records

In most cases, a BDAM file is considered "logically" full if more than 70 percent of the disk storage space contains data records. The upper and lower address limits for BDAM can be controlled, such that records can be stored on a single cylinder, a group of cylinders, or a group of disk devices.

Despite the problems of space usage and unique keys, hashing remains one of the fastest ways to store and retrieve information.  Almost all mainframe systems can take a symbolic key and convert it into a disk storage address in as little as 50 milliseconds.  Although hashing is a very old technique, it is still an extremely powerful method.  Many C++ programmers use hashing to store and retrieve records within their object-oriented applications and database objects require the definition of an object ID (OID), which is the unique address of the database object.

 

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