In computer science, a B-tree is a self-balancing tree data structure that keeps data sorted and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time. The B-tree is a generalization of a binary search tree in that a node can have more than two children (Comer 1979, p. 123). Unlike self-balancing binary search trees, the B-tree is optimized for systems that read and write large blocks of data. B-trees are a good example of a data structure for external memory. It is commonly used in databases and filesystems.
In the B+ tree, copies of the keys are stored in the internal nodes; the keys and records are stored in leaves; in addition, a leaf node may include a pointer to the next leaf node to speed sequential access (Comer 1979, p. 129).
The B* tree balances more neighboring internal nodes to keep the internal nodes more densely packed (Comer 1979, p. 129). This variant requires non-root nodes to be at least 2/3 full instead of 1/2 (Knuth 1998, p. 488). To maintain this, instead of immediately splitting up a node when it gets full, its keys are shared with a node next to it. When both nodes are full, then the two nodes are split into three. Deleting nodes is somewhat more complex than inserting however.
B-trees can be turned into order statistic trees to allow rapid searches for the Nth record in key order, or counting the number of records between any two records, and various other related operations.
