An efficient I/O interface for optical disks

  • Authors:
  • Jeffrey S. Vitter

  • Affiliations:
  • Brown Univ., Providence, RI

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
  • Year:
  • 1985

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Abstract

We introduce the notion of an I/O interface for optical digital (write-once) disks, which is quite different from earlier research. The purpose of an I/O interface is to allow existing operating systems and application programs that use magnetic disks to use optical disks instead, with minimal change. We define what it means for an I/O interface to be disk-efficient. We demonstrate a practical disk- efficient I/O interface and show that its I/O performance in many cases is optimum, up to a constant factor, among all disk-efficient interfaces. The interface is most effective for applications that are not update-intensive. An additional capability is a built-in history mechanism that provides software support for accessing previous versions of records. Even if not implemented, the I/O interface can be used as a programming tool to develop efficient special purpose applications for use with optical disks.