A database disk buffer management algorithm based on prefetching

This paper proposes a prefetch-based disk buffer management algorithm, which we call W²R (Weighing/Waiting Room). Instead of using elaborate prefetching schemes to decide which block to prefetch and when, we simply follow the LRU-OBL (One Block Lookahead) approach and prefetch the logical next block along with the block that is being referenced. The basic difference is that the W²R algorithm logically partitions the buffer into two rooms, namely the Weighing Room and the Waiting Room. The referenced, hence fetched block is placed in the Weighing Room, while the prefetched logical next block is placed in the Waiting Room. By so doing, we alleviate some inherent deficiencies of blindly prefetching the logical next block of a referenced block. Specifically, a prefetched block that is never used may replace a possibly valuable block and a prefetched block, though referenced in the future, may replace a block that is used earlier than itself. Using the DB2 and OLTP traces, we show t...