I mean in the context of block-oriented access, like VM as discussed in the article. That a block-aware data structure performs much better than a block-unaware

I mean in the context of block-oriented access, like VM as discussed in the article. That a block-aware data structure performs much better than a block-unaware one isn’t that surprising or interesting, at least to me. The question is: In the context of a block-oriented store, like a VM system, when is b-heap better or worse than b-tree and variants? Note, I said “and variants” deliberately because of course plain b-tree is pretty simple. Just comparing O between b-heap and b-tree isn’t enough because B-tree variants can have the same O characteristics, I think.