Partitioned B-trees - a user's guide

Abstract: A recent article introduced partitioned B-trees, in which partitions are defined not in the catalogs but by distinct values in an artificial leading key column. As there usually is only a single value in this column, there usually is only a single partition, and queries and updates perform just like in traditional B-tree indexes. By temporarily permitting multiple values, at the expense of reduced query perform-ance, interesting database usage scenarios become possible, in particular for bulk insert (database load). The present paper guides database administrators to exploit-ing partitioned B-trees even if they are not implemented by their DBMS vendor.