Set-oriented disk access to large complex objects

The use of set-oriented disk access whereby a variable-sized set of pages can be fetched or flushed to disk in a single call to the I/O system is proposed. This solution provides fast access to variable-length complex objects, yet retains the advantages of a page-structured buffer pool with a conventional frame size. A set-oriented I/O manager has been implemented in the Darmstadt database kernel system using the data-chained I/O method. Performance management indicate considerable enhancement of throughput as well as response time. In the experiments, set-oriented disk access for very large objects performed up to 25 times faster than conventional I/O