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. hashing, hashing techniques, hashing methods, hash coding, key transformation, key-to-address transformation, direct addressing, randomizing, random access, scatter storage, information retrieval, hashing analysis, randomization performance analysis 3.7 3.72 3.73 3.74 3.79 4.9 5.9 CA731003 JB January 20, 1978 11:51 AM 2258 4 2437 2319 4 2437 2313 4 2437 2359 4 2437 2437 4 2437 2552 4 2437 2781 4 2437 2860 4 2437 2991 4 2437 2203 5 2437 2437 5 2437 2437 5 2437 2437 5 2437