Path: news.easynews.com!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: DA Morgan Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.server Subject: Re: index rebuilding... Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 14:11:10 -0800 Organization: EXE Message-ID: <3E3D977E.D31B2DA0@exesolutions.com> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3EXZ9.53855$GX4.2199677@news2.east.cox.net> <3E39A86C.3143C919@exesolutions.com> <69f6c1c8.0301301921.143657e6@posting.google.com> <998d28f7.0301310721.3c724ec@posting.google.com> <3E3AAC94.B8B6073C@exesolutions.com> <6By_9.37587$jM5.94689@newsfeeds.bigpond.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cache-Post-Path: yasure!unknown@mud43.drizzle.com X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 39 Xref: newsfeed1.easynews.com comp.databases.oracle.server:174529 X-Received-Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 15:10:49 MST (news.easynews.com) Noons wrote: > "Jonathan Lewis" wrote in > news:b1ipul$gtj$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk and I quote: > > > > > Of course, this does mean that Oracle doesn't > > use B*Trees, as it's manuals have claimed since > > at least 5.1 - it uses a version of B+trees. > > Akshally, the whole thing is terminally confusing. > According to Knuth, B+trees and B*trees are quite > different. And Oracle doesn't help with their > "modified algorithm" B+trees thing. It all adds to > the confusion. > > I'd bet if someone spends some time going through the > actual index handling source code, it will come out > that the algorithm is neither one nor the other and > is in fact quite unique. > > It's one of the few areas where makers can still have some > significant implementation differences, and of course > distinguishing factors. The only reason we don't see the > marketing dingbats pouring all over it is that the whole thing > is arcane, to put it very mildly. > > -- > Cheers > Nuno Souto > nsouto@optusnet.com.au.nospam Sounds to me like someone is going to be doing some block dumps pretty soon. Or at least I hope so. It would be great to have a definitive answer. Daniel Morgan