An archiving model for a hierarchical information storage environment

We consider an archiving model for a database consisting of secondary and tertiary storage devices in which the query rate for a record declines as it ages. We propose a ‘dynamic’ archiving policy based on the number of records and the age of the records in the secondary device. We analyze the cases when the number of new records inserted in the system over time are either constant or follow a Poisson process. For both scenarios, we characterize the properties of the policy parameters and provide optimization results when the objective is to minimize the average record retrieval times. Furthermore, we propose a simple heuristic method for obtaining near-optimal policies in large databases when the record query rate declines exponentially with time. The effectiveness of the heuristic is tested via a numerical experiment. Finally, we examine the behavior of performance measures such as the average record retrieval time and the hit rate as system parameters are varied.