File Structures: An Object-Oriented Approach with C++

It's easy, very clear and fast to read, has good examples and points to many further readings. If you want to know about B-Trees, it's the best place to start. It covers Indexing (primary, secondary, large indexing), B-Trees (B, B+, B*) and Hashing (concepts, extendible hashing).I've read only the Second Edition, wich weren't Object-Oriented (the code was in Pascal/C). This book was used as a major reference in an undergraduate Computer Engineering couse, in a file structure class.I don't know why people are complainig about the code. What are you expecting to learn? For me, concepts about file structures. I think it could be even written in pseudo-code, because the topics were so easy to understand that I've not read any line of code from the book. It was very easy for me to implement the complete code for B and B+ Trees in C based on that text.

The book is an excellent introduction to what goes on inside databases.I used an earlier edition of this book when I was suddenly put in the position of writing database internals, and I had to modify and improve the B-tree code of a database.While the book is not advanced, it gave me an understanding of how B-trees work which helped me master this assignment. After reading this book, I was able to read more advanced articles in the database literature.The discussion in the book is extremely clear. The content is fascinating and it gives you a solid introduction to topics that are basic to modern computer systems.The book will not make you an expert (you have to have suitable mentors and suitable reading of the literature for that) but it will get you off the ground which is all you should expect from an introductory book.You have to recognize that the code and algorithms are not industry quality - they are teaching quality - they do not have all the optimizations one would expect to use in industry; the code in the book is designed to make the concepts clear.

Have you ever wondered how that database you bought works way down in the basement? This book is the place to find out as far as the actual storage on disk is concerned. The book is well-written and well-equipped with glossaries and summaries. Also of note is that the authors make good use of the facilities of C++ for implementing object-oriented access to the file structures. Frankly, I don't expect to actually apply anything I've read in this book in practice. Nevertheless, it was well worth reading -- and in case I need to implement file structures myself, I know where to find the details.

It's a very good book, and it covers a very rare topic (I actually don't know of any other similar book--you'd have to hit database-specific sources to get this kind of info.) I haven't touched the code in it, though, so it's possible there are errors, but the conceptual and algorithmic wealth that's contained in the book makes it worth the price (twice over, actually.) So, the reviews are probably correct, but unduly harsh in their criticism, and unfair in stressing some relatively unimportant weaknesses (potentially--I haven't used the code) over the huge overall usefulness of this work. What sucks about it is that bookpool.com doesn't carry it, and therefore you'll have to pay pretty much the sticker price . Still it's worth, I think.