General Performance Analysis of Key-to-Address
Transformation Methods Using an Abstract File 
Concept
This paper presents a new approach to the analysis
of performance of the various key-to-address 
transformation methods.  In this approach the keys in
a file are assumed to have been selected from the 
key space according to a certain probabilistic selection
algorithm.  All files with the same number of 
keys selected from this key space will be suitably weighted
in accordance with the algorithm, and the 
average performance of the transformation methods on
these files will be used as the potential of these 
methods.  Using this analysis, methods with the same overall
performance can be classified and key distributions 
partial to certain transformations can be identified.
 All this can be done analytically.  The approach 
is applied to a group of transformation methods
using files whose keys are selected randomly.
CACM October, 1973
Lum, V. Y.
