trees and external storage as many as the node actually holds)starting at when it finds record with greater keyit knows to go to the child whose link lies between this record and the preceding one smith smyth smoot snell (other data (other data figure (other data , , , (other data , block numbers , node in -tree of order this process continues until the correct node is found if leaf is reached without finding the specified keythe search is unsuccessful insertion the insertion process in -tree is more like an insertion in - tree than in tree recall that in tree many nodes are not fulland in fact contain only one data item in particulara node split always produces two nodes with one item in each this is not an optimum approach in -tree in -tree it' important to keep the nodes as full as possible so that each disk accesswhich reads an entire nodecan acquire the maximum amount of data to help achieve this endthe insertion process differs from that of trees in three waysa node split divides the data items equallyhalf go to the newly created nodeand half remain in the old one node splits are performed from the bottom upas in - treerather than from the top down