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File Organization and Indexing

GATE CSE 2024 Set 2 · Q26

MSQ1 markEasy

Time

Which of the following file organizations is/are I/O efficient for the scan operation in DBMS?

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Official answer: A) Sorted; B) Heap

File Organization and Indexing

A scan operation in a database retrieves all data records/pages of a relation:

  • (A) Sorted file: Records are ordered and stored compactly across contiguous data blocks. Scanning reads each block sequentially, requiring only BB block I/Os (where BB is the number of data blocks), which is optimal.

  • (B) Heap file: Records are packed in data pages without any particular order. A full scan simply reads every block of the file sequentially from start to end, which also costs BB block I/Os and is highly I/O efficient.

  • (C) & (D) Unclustered tree/hash index: Because the index is unclustered, the physical ordering of records in the data blocks does not correspond to the index key order. Traversing the unclustered index to retrieve all records involves fetching records across arbitrarily scattered pages, potentially requiring up to 11 I/O per record (RR I/Os, where R≫BR \gg B), which is extremely I/O inefficient for a full scan.

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This File Organization and Indexing previous year question is Q26 of the GATE CSE 2024 Set 2 paper. Find more GATE CSE PYQs on File Organization and Indexing in Databases, or browse all GATE CSE PYQs.

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File Organization and Indexing in GATE CSE

File Organization and Indexing has 17 GATE CSE PYQs across 17 papers from 2011 to 2026. 2 of them are 1-mark MSQs like this one, and it is the only one in GATE CSE 2024 Set 2.

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GateAI solution cardGATE CSE 2024 Set 2 · Q26 · MSQ

Which of the following file organizations is/are I/O efficient for the scan operation in DBMS?

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Independent practice explanation verified by the GateAI team. GATE is conducted by the IITs; question text follows the official paper.