Question

You need to design a data storage scheme for Hayseed Heaven library data system. There are several hundred thousand large data records. You expect frequent insertions/deletions as well as frequent queries, involving multiple attributes. There is no requirement for printing the file in order. You may assume the initial file is available sorted. The queries are in real time and primarily occur on the ISBN number, title, and author fields. There are occasional queries on the publisher and subject fields of the record. You may make reasonable assumptions about hardware availability. The entire system is archived monthly. What do you propose and why

Answer 1

Answer:

Make use of hash tables

Explanation:

The appropriate thing to use for this should be a hash table.

A Hash Table can be described as a data structure which stores data in an associative manner. In a hash table, data is stored in an array format, where each data value has its own unique index value. Access of data becomes very fast if we know the index of the desired data. So we can perform Hashing on ISBN Number since its unique and based on the Hash Function w ecan store the Information record.

There is no requirement for printing the file in order - HashTables dont store the data in order of insertions, so no problems with that

It becomes a data structure in which insertion and search operations are very fast irrespective of the size of the data. So Querying books details can be fast and searching will take less time.

It can also be pointed out that it wont be too expensive for Hardware implemtation as HashTables stores data based on Hash Functions and memory consumption is also optimal which reduces memory wastages.