METHOD FOR EXECUTING A DISTRIBUTION SORT

摘要

A method for executing an external distribution sort in which the data to be rearranged includes keyed stored records that can be accessed on associative secondary storage. The method steps include random sampling of a certain number of keys and internally sorting the sampled keys; forming equal sized partitions of records in a single pass, each partition of which can fit within internal CPU memory and constitute a range of key values; and associatively retrieving all of the records whose keys lie within a range and internally sorting said records.