Automatic generation of physical data base structures

This paper addresses a problem which arises during the design of an integrated data base: this is to generate a set of physical data structures capable of supporting a desired set of logical data structures. A prototype design aid which generates physical data structures for IMS is described. A state diagram is used to represent the constraints imposed by IMS, and a modified depth first tree search is used to find the physical data structures. One can force the solution to either satisfy bounds on one or more objective functions, and/or optimize a single objective function.