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In a file set up or development process, the file‘s structure is defined and its contents identified. The four characteristics considered in defining the structure...

In a file set up or development process, the file‘s structure is defined and its contents identified. The four characteristics considered in defining the structure and identifying the contents in a file set up or development process are; volatility, activity, size and growth.
Required:
(i) Using the example of a payroll file, explain the terms; volatility, activity, size and growth.
(ii) Explain how each of the characteristics in (i) above may influence decisions to do with a file structure design and in planning whether the mode of access should be sequential, indexed sequential or random.

Answers

gregory
Volatility – This is the frequency with which records are added to the fileor
deleted from it. If the frequency is high, the file is said to be volatile.
A file that is not altered is ?static?. If frequency is low, the file
is said to be ?semi-static?.
Activity –Is the processing of a master file. Hit rate is a measure of the
=activity‘ of the file.
Size –This is the amount of data stored in the file. It may be expressed
interms of the number of characters or number of records.
Growth –Files often grow steadily in size as new records are added. growth
mustbe allowed for when planning how to store a file.
(ii)

Volatility
- A file with Volatile variable (has data that can be changed with external process)
is preferably
designed to be accessed using index sequential.
- This is because of speed of access; index sequential files are fast to locate than random or
sequential files.
- For a file whose records are relatively permanent in nature meaning that the hit rate
is low, then random file organization would be preferred.

Activity
- Files that are accessed every now and then should be designed to be accessed using
index sequential method. Speed being one of the reasons for this. Since its mostly used
in transaction files where the hit rate is high to enable records to be located faster.

Size
- A small sized file can well be accessed using random method or sequential method where
as a large file containing large amount of data, its data can easily be located using an
index sequential method since an index file can be used to effectively overcome the
problem of key searching, and to speed up the key search as well.

Growth
- The same consideration would be put in place as that of size of files.
gregorymasila answered the question on November 27, 2017 at 11:19

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