answersLogoWhite

0


Best Answer

direct access allows you to access the needed record directly with serial access u have to go through all the others before arriving to the desired one

User Avatar

Wiki User

15y ago
This answer is:
User Avatar

Add your answer:

Earn +20 pts
Q: Serial and direct access
Write your answer...
Submit
Still have questions?
magnify glass
imp
Continue Learning about Computer Science

Difference between direct and serial access?

Serial access means going through everything one by one, starting at the beginning, until you reach the item you want. Direct access means going straight to the item you want without having to go through other ones. If you wanted to print all the names in a database, using serial access would be fine because you are starting at the first and going right through to the end.In terms of storage units, magnetic tape is a form of serial access, where a disk provides direct access. If you think of a cassette tape, you would have to fast forward or rewind to get to a piece of music you wanted. A CD enables you to go direct to what you want, without having to pass through anything else.


Serial access secondary storage device?

name one access secondary device?


File accessing techniques in data management system?

Information is kept in files. Files reside on secondary storage. When this information is to be used, it has to be accessed and brought into primary main memory. Information in files could be accessed in many ways. It is usually dependent on an application.Sequential Access: A simple access method, information in a file is accessed sequentially one record after another. To process the with record all the 1-1 records previous to 1 must be accessed. Sequential access is based on the tape model that is inherently a sequential access device. Sequential access is best suited where most of the records in a file are to be processed. For example, transaction files.Direct Access: Sometimes it is not necessary to process every record in a file. It may not be necessary to process records in the order in which they are present. Information present in a record of a file is to be accessed only if some key value in that record is known. In all such cases, direct access is used. Direct access is based on the disk that is a direct access device and allows random access of any file block. Since a file is a collection of physical blocks, any block and hence the records in that block are accessed. For example, master files. Databases are often of this type since they allow query processing that involves immediate access to large amounts of information. All reservation systems fall into this category. Not all operating systems support direct access files. Usually files are to be defined as sequential or direct at the time of creation and accessed accordingly later. Sequential access of a direct access file is possible but direct access of a sequential file is not.Indexed Sequential Access: This access method is a slight modification of the direct access method. It is in fact a combination of both the sequential access as well as direct access. The main concept is to access a file direct first and then sequentially from that point onwards. This access method involves maintaining an index. The index is a pointer to a block. To access a record in a file, a direct access of the index is made. The information obtained from this access is used to access the file. For example, the direct access to a file will give the block address and within the block the record is accessed sequentially. Sometimes indexes may be big. So hierarchies of indexes are built in which one direct access of an index leads to info to access another index directly and so on till the actual file is accessed sequentially for the particular record. The main advantage in this type of access is that both direct and sequential access of files is possible.


Difference between direct and sequential access?

RAM or Random Access Memory is used for fast computer memory. The word "Random" is a bit of a misnomer, as there is nothing random about access to this memory. What it actually means is that you can select an address at "random", that is, any address within the capability of the memory, and read or write data to/from that address just as fast as you could read or write data to any other address. In other words, data stored anywhere in the memory can be accessed quickly. Serial memory is different in that access time depends upon where on the medium the data is stored. Examples are magnetic tape, optical disk, magnetic disk. "arbitary access" is not a term used in electronics that I can find. I think it is just another term for "random access".


Is direct access file ordered?

A direct access file, in most systems, refers to a file where individual records are retrieved directlly by using a record number to refer to a specific position in a file. The alternative is to reach the desired record by sequential access: Reading all the records from the beginning until you reach the desired position in the file. The records in the file do not have to be in any specific order.

Related questions

Are hard disks direct or serial access?

Direct. Data can be accessed directly without going through all the preceding data to find what is required. An example of serial access would be tape.


Do the floppies follow direct or serial access?

serial because it takes a lot of time to retrieve information


What are the analogies of Serial Access and Direct Access in our daily day life?

Serial Access: • In serial access the data is accessed from the beginning and the searched through the entire bits of data until the required information is found. • Example of serial access can be found in daily life: The old film reel where the movie starts at the beginning and data is read in order till the end. Direct Access: • In this method the computer can calculate, and the search the file, for the given information, and the computer directly goes to the given in formation. • Example of this access in daily life: Pen drive, it is easily accessed it can store DVD movies


Difference between direct and serial access?

Serial access means going through everything one by one, starting at the beginning, until you reach the item you want. Direct access means going straight to the item you want without having to go through other ones. If you wanted to print all the names in a database, using serial access would be fine because you are starting at the first and going right through to the end.In terms of storage units, magnetic tape is a form of serial access, where a disk provides direct access. If you think of a cassette tape, you would have to fast forward or rewind to get to a piece of music you wanted. A CD enables you to go direct to what you want, without having to pass through anything else.


What is the difference between direct access and sequential access?

, Both terms "direct access" and "sequential access" as you must have guessed refer to accessing schemes in the file system. In broadest sense difference between these two can be stated like this -In sequential access data is stored at random locations. -In direct access data is stored at sequential locations. ( Ironically this is true No matter what kind of first impression we get when we hear it for the first time. ) -In sequential access addition of data is fast but retrieval of data is slow. -In direct access addition of data is slow as reordering of data blocks may be needed to put current data block after the last used data block for the file. But retrieval of data is fast. -Data structure implementing Sequential access is linked list. -Data structure implementing Direct access is an Array. Application areas:- A situation where rate of addition of data is much larger compared to retrieval of data Sequential access is preferred, in opposite situation Direct access is more suitable. Regards, Prime There are technical explanations as to how it works, but in simple terms, direct access means going straight to the record you want, whereas sequential access means going through all records one by one until you find the one you want.


The most important advantage of disk storage over tape storage?

disk storage-> direct data access storage tape storage -> serial data access storage


How does Direct Access work?

Direct access is designed to give the user of a computer direct access to their internal network over the internet, and is in many ways similar to VPN's.


Name three serial access secondary storage device?

Random Access memory


Which nation had direct access to the pacific ocean?

No European nation , until 1763 that Russia had direct access to the Pacific.


Differences among sequential access direct access?

Let's say you have a set of 100 pieces of data, which are all names. Now, if you want to find a specific name, "Kevin", you can find it in different ways. You could either go through each of the records one after another, or you could randomly generate a number, and check if that record is "Kevin", this is potentially faster than sequential access as "Kevin" could be the last record.


What companies offer direct market access?

Not many companies offer direct market access. The ones that do offer direct market access include: London Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and AVATAR Securities.


What is the disadvantage of serial access?

None