Hashing in DBMS

In a huge database structure, it is very inefficient to search all the index values and reach the desired data. Hashing technique is used to calculate the direct location of a data record on the disk without using index structure.

In this technique, data is stored at the data blocks whose address is generated by using the hashing function. The memory location where these records are stored is known as data bucket or data blocks.

In this, a hash function can choose any of the column value to generate the address. Most of the time, the hash function uses the primary key to generate the address of the data block. A hash function is a simple mathematical function to any complex mathematical function. We can even consider the primary key itself as the address of the data block. That means each row whose address will be the same as a primary key stored in the data block.

The above diagram shows data block addresses same as primary key value. This hash function can also be a simple mathematical function like exponential, mod, cos, sin, etc. Suppose we have mod (5) hash function to determine the address of the data block. In this case, it applies mod (5) hash function on the primary keys and generates 3, 3, 1, 4 and 2 respectively, and records are stored in those data block addresses.