file organisation

Question 1

what is a file

Answer 1

a specific piece of information or data element in a record.

Question 2

record

Answer 2

a collection of related data elements or fields that are grouped together.

Question 3

what is a fixed length feild

Answer 3

this allocates the same amount of space for each piece of data to be stored. if the file exceeds this space the stored value will be truncated. if the field has less than the maximum length unit will be padded to fill any remaining space.

Question 4

variable length feild

Answer 4

these store only the characters that are needed without any padding this takes up less space.

Question 5

what is serial file access

Answer 5

a method of accessing data in which blocks are read from a storage medium in the physical order they occur until the required item is reached.

Question 6

what is sequential access

Answer 6

accessing data in one record at a time from the beginning of the file to the end sorted in some order

Question 7

what is indexed sequential access

Answer 7

allows records to be accessed sequentially by help of an index