access plan Ans- A set of instructions generated at application compilation time that is created and
managed by a DBMS. The access plan predetermines how an application's query will access the
database at run time.
algorithms Ans- A process or set of operations in a calculation.
automatic query optimization Ans- A method by which a DBMS finds the most efficient access path for
the execution of a query.
B-tree index Ans- An ordered data structure organized as an upside-down tree.
bitmap index Ans- An index that uses a bit array (0s and 1s) to represent the existence of a value or
condition.
buffer cache Ans- See data cache
data cache Ans- A shared, reserved memory area that stores the most recently accessed data blocks in
RAM. Also called buffer cache.
data files Ans- A named physical storage space that stores a database's data. It can reside in a different
directory on a hard disk or on one or more hard disks. All data in a database is stored in data files. A
typical enterprise database is normally composed of several data files. A data file can contain rows from
one or more tables.
data sparsity Ans- A column distribution of values or the number of different values a column can have.
database performance tuning Ans- A set of activities and procedures designed to reduce the response
time of a database system—that is, to ensure that an end-user query is processed by the DBMS in the
minimum amount of time.