Suppose that the patient records of Exercise 13.7.1 are augmented by an additional repeating field that represents cholesterol tests. Each cholesterol test requires 16 bytes for a date and an integer result of the test. Show the layout of patient records if:

 

a) The repeating tests are kept with the record itself.

b) The tests are stored on a separate block, with pointers to them in the record.

Exercise 13.7.1

A patient record consists of the following fixed-length fields: the patient’s date of birth, social-security number, and patient ID, each 10 bytes long. It also has the following variable-length fields: name, address, and patient history. If pointers within a record require 4 bytes, and the record length is a 4-byte integer, how many bytes, exclusive of the space needed for the variable length fields, are needed for the record? You may assume that no alignment of fields is required.