File Organization

What
File organization is the process of organizing pages of data into files of data

Heap Files
Heap files are unordered and perform best when data access is a file scan that retrieves all records. Very easy to maintain

Sorted Files
Sorted files are obviously ordered. They are best when access to a file is based on a search key. Very expensive to maintain because insertions and deletions need to guarantee the order will not be lost

Advantages

 * Searching and range queries are faster than unordered heap files

Disadvantages

 * Expensive to maintain
 * Can only search on one search key

Clustered Files
Clustered files use indexes and are a comprimise between heap and sorted files.