ABSTRACT
Strengths: Like the B-tree data structure, a B+-tree is designed for ordered collections that must be held in secondary storage. As with a B-tree, a B+-tree of order t can hold up to 2t− 1 elements in each node. By adjusting t, the B+-tree can be adapted so that a full node fills a disk page. The advantage of a B+-tree over a B-tree is that all elements in the collection are held in the leaf nodes, which are linked together to form a sorted list. Thus, a B+-tree can support constant time methods to move forward or backward in the iteration order. Having all of the elements occur in sorted order at the leaf level supports very fast streaming access to the data, and real-time updates of the data structure through a process known as bulk loading.
