Monday, February 09, 2009

B-tree

In computer science, a B-tree is a tree data structure that keeps data sorted and allows searches, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic amortized time. Unlike self-balancing binary search trees, it is optimized for systems that read and write large blocks of data. It is most commonly used in databases and file systems.

In B-trees, internal (non-leaf) nodes can have a variable number of child nodes within some pre-defined range. When data is inserted or removed from a node, its number of child nodes changes. In order to maintain the pre-defined range, internal nodes may be joined or split. Because a range of child nodes is permitted, B-trees do not need re-balancing as frequently as other self-balancing search trees, but may waste some space, since nodes are not entirely full. The lower and upper bounds on the number of child nodes are typically fixed for a particular implementation. For example, in a 2-3 B-tree (often simply referred to as a 2-3 tree), each internal node may have only 2 or 3 child nodes.

No comments: