Flexibly Resizable Multidimensional Arrays

Abstract

Recently, multidimensional arrays are becoming important data structures for storing large scale multidimensional data; e.g., in scientific databases or MOLAP databases. Size of multidimensional arrays used in such a database is fixed in every dimension in order to be benefited by the fast random accessing capability to array elements. While such a fixed size array cannot extend or shrink without relocating all of the elements, an extendible array can extend its size along any directions without any relocation. However that the existing extendible arrays can always extend only at the surrounding is a strict restriction. In this paper, we propose a new flexible extendible array organization, in which a subarray can be inserted or removed even in the midst of the array