Amdb: a visual access method development tool

The development process for access methods (AMs) in database systems is complex and tedious. Amdb is a graphical tool that facilitates the design and tuning process for height-balanced tree-structured AMs. Central to amdb's user interface is a suite of graphical views that visualize the entire search tree, paths and subtrees within the tree, and data contained in the tree. These views animate search tree operations in order to visualize the behavior of an access method. Amdb provides metrics that characterize the performance of queries, the tree structure, and the structure-shaping aspects of an AM implementation. The visualizations can be used to browse the performance metrics in the context of the tree structure. The combination of these features allows a designer to locate the sources of performance loss reported by the metrics and investigate causes for those deficiencies.