The Determination of the Optimum Database Maintenance Points

The initial database search cost deteriorates due to record additions, deletions and updates performed during the system operation. Previous studies proposed strategies for selecting the optimum maintenance points by making various assumptions about the rate of database deterioration, the database planning period, the maintenance interval, etc. However, the studies did not express the optimum maintenance points as a function of the database physical structure. The paper assumes (a) that the rate of additions to the database equals the rate of deletions for each database record type, and (b) that maintenance is performed for the entire database at fixed time intervals and it shows how the maintenance points may be determined for various primitive physical database structures. The results are subsequently ultilized to select the optimum maintenance points for arbitrary database structures.