Physical Database Design

1.3 Elements of Physical Design: Indexing, Partitioning, and Clustering 7

to the DBMS-specific implementation model (e.g., SQL tables). We also note

that many conceptual data models are obtained not from scratch, but from the

process of reverse engineering from an existing DBMS-specific schema [Silber-

schatz 2006]. Our definition of the physical model is given below.

3. Physical database design. The physical database design step involves the selection

of indexes, partitioning, clustering, and selective materialization of data. Physical

database design (as treated in this book) begins after the SQL tables have been

defined and normalized. It focuses on the methods of storing and accessing those

tables on disk that enable the database to operate with high ...