Commit protocols for externalized-commit heterogeneous database systems

In designing a heterogeneous database systems, one of the main technical challenges is developing techniques for ensuring global commit. That is, guaranteeing that a transaction spanning multiple individual database management systems (DBMSs) either commits at all the participating DBMSs or at none of them. Previous work in this area typically assumes that the participating DBMSs do not provide a mechanism for interacting with their commit facilities. While this is true in many cases, in practice there are systems which support a programmatic interface to their commit protocols. We refer to database systems offering such facilities asexternalized commit DBMSs.The focus of this paper is on commit protocols for these systems. We propose two new commit protocols for externalized commit DBMSs. The first may be used to obtain global commit in heterogeneous database systems composed of DBMSs with different 2-phase commit protocols (e.g., centralized and linear). The second protocol is more general, and ensures global commit even if the participating DBMSs employ 3-phase commit protocols. The more general protocol also preserves database autonomy, since it does not block a DBMS upon failure of another system. We describe both protocols in detail and prove their correctness. Recommended by: M. RusinkiewiczThis work was partially supported by an IBM Research Initiation Grant.     

Transaction processing in multilevel secure databases withkernelized architecture: Challenges and solutions

Multilevel security poses many challenging problems for transaction processing. The challenges are due to the conflicting requirements imposed by confidentiality, integrity, and availability-the three components of security. We identify these requirements on transaction processing in Multilevel Secure (MLS) database management systems (DBMSs) and survey the efforts of a number of researchers to meet these requirements. While our emphasis is primarily on centralized systems based on kernelized architecture, we briefly overview the research in the distributed MLS DBMSs as well     

Overview of multidatabase transaction management

A multidatabase system (MDBS) is a facility that allows users access to data located in multiple autonomous database management systems (DBMSs). In such a system,global transactions are executed under the control of the MDBS. Independently,local transactions are executed under the control of the local DBMSs. Each local DBMS integrated by the MDBS may employ a different transaction management scheme. In addition, each local DBMS has complete control over all transactions (global and local) executing at its site, including the ability to abort at any point any of the transactions executing at its site. Typically, no design or internal DBMS structure changes are allowed in order to accommodate the MDBS. Furthermore, the local DBMSs may not be aware of each other and, as a consequence, cannot coordinate their actions. Thus, traditional techniques for ensuring transaction atomicity and consistency in homogeneous distributed database systems may not be appropriate for an MDBS environment. The objective of this article is to provide a brief review of the most current work in the area of multidatabase transaction management. We first define the problem and argue that the multidatabase research will become increasingly important in the coming years. We then outline basic research issues in multidatabase transaction management and review recent results in the area. We conclude with a discussion of open problems and practical implications of this research.     

Transaction management in distributed heterogeneous database management systems

Current distributed, heterogeneous database management systems (DBMSs) address the issue of distributed transaction management (DTM) in two different ways: some systems rely solely on unmodified local transaction managers (LTMs), thereby helping preserve local DBMS autonomy, but limit functionality (e.g. allow only unsynchronized retrievals, preclude distributed updates, etc.); others maintain full functionality but require the (re)design of the LTMs to enforce homogeneous DTM across all heterogeneous DBMSs, thereby giving up most of the local DBMS autonomy.

The goal of the work presented here is to establish the minimum set of modifications to LTMs that allow synchronized retrievals and distributed updates (whenever semantic conflicts can be resolved), and will continue to maintain a high degree of local DBMS autonomy. The problems of: (1) distribution of responsibility between DTM and LTMs, (2) concatenation of functionally-equivalent LTM mechanisms, and (3) providing compensation mechanisms for functionally-limited LTMs are introduced. Solutions to the above problems are shown to exist. However, the interconnection of autonomous, heterogeneous DBMSs is significantly more difficult than anticipated, despite communication standardization and current optimism.     

Public Key Cryptography in Action

This article discusses data security and controls, primarily in the context of data base management systems (DBMSs), with an emphasis on basic principles and mechanisms that have been successfully used by practitioners in actual products and systems. The general discussion does not focus on particular products, although a later section does review several products to illustrate previously discussed concepts. The discussion of data bases is limited specifically to relational DBMSs, which store data in relations that have specific mathematical properties. All examples given are in SQL. It is assumed that readers are familiar with rudimentary concepts of relational data bases and SQL.

This article begins with a review of basic security objectives, followed by a discussion of access controls in the current generation of commercially available DBMSs. The problem of multilevel security is then introduced, including a review of techniques developed specifically for multilevel security.     

Comparing columnar,row and array DBMSs to process recursive queries on graphs

Analyzing graphs is a fundamental problem in big data analytics, for which DBMS technology does not seem competitive. On the other hand, SQL recursive queries are a fundamental mechanism to analyze graphs in a DBMS, whose processing and optimization are significantly harder than traditional SPJ queries. Columnar DBMSs are a new faster class of database system, with significantly different storage and query processing mechanisms compared to row DBMSs, still the dominating technology. With that motivation in mind, we study the optimization of recursive queries on a columnar DBMS focusing on two fundamental and complementary graph problems: transitive closure and adjacency matrix multiplication. From a query processing perspective we consider the three fundamental relational operators: selection, projection and join (SPJ), where projection subsumes SQL group-by aggregation. We present comprehensive experiments comparing recursive query processing on columnar, row and array DBMSs to analyze large graphs with different shape and density. We study the relative impact of query optimizations and we compare raw speed of DBMSs to evaluate recursive queries on graphs. Results confirm classical query optimizations that keep working well in a columnar DBMS, but their relative impact is different. Most importantly, a columnar DBMS with tuned query optimization is uniformly faster than row and array systems to analyze large graphs, regardless of their shape, density and connectivity. On the other hand, there is no clear winner between the row and array DBMSs.     

空间分析数据库的研究方法及技术

通过大量文献研究 ,分析了空间分析数据库的研究平台、研究方法和技术 ,以及各种研究平台的优缺点 .重点讨论了基于 Realms的空间数据类型、ROSE代数、基于可扩充 DBMS的空间分析数据库的研究方法和技术 ,以及同类系统的不足和需研究解决的问题 ,并指出 Realm s可以有效地表示二维的空间数据及支持空间拓扑操作算法 .文中还分析研究了基于主存数据库技术和 ROSE代数的空间存储管理子系统 ,并指出把它与可扩充数据库管理系统或具有 ADT机制的 DBMS进行集成 ,是研究空间分析 DBMS的有效途径     

STQing：一种时态GIS可视化查询语言

在GIS领域,时态属性日趋重要,很多数据库管理系统已经加入了时间和空间属性而成为空间数据库系统。本文在此基础上提出了时态可视化,并设计了一个可以适应时空变化能力的图标式可视化查询语言STQing。     

EXACT: an extensible approach to active object-oriented databases

Active database management systems (DBMSs) are a fast-growing area of research, mainly due to the large number of applications which can benefit from this active dimension. These applications are far from being homogeneous, requiring different kinds of functionalities. However, most of the active DBMSs described in the literature only provide a fixed, hard-wired execution model to support the active dimension. In object-oriented DBMSs, event-condition-action rules have been propo sed for providing active behaviour. This paper presents EXACT, a rule manager for object-oriented DBMSs which provides a variety of options from which the designer can choose the one that best fits the semantics of the concept to be supported by rules. Due to the difficulty of foreseeing future requirements, special attention has been paid to making rule management easily extensible, so that the user can tailor it to suit specific applications. This has been borne out by an implementation in ADAM, an object -oriented DBMS. An example is shown of how the default mechanism can be easily extended to support new requirements. Edited by Y. Vassiliou. Received May 26, 1994 / Revised January 26, 1995, June 22, 1996 / Accepted November 4, 1996     

Temporal databases: From theory to applications

Problems concerning the date and time representation in databases are well studied in scientific literature. Temporal databases are required in many applications including the conventional applications of DBMSs such as financial systems. However, commercial systems and standards for the query language do not support temporal data features. A simple and efficient approach for implementing temporal capabilities over conventional commercial DBMSs is proposed and various aspects of its practical applications are described.     

Multimedia databases

The rapidly growing interest in building multimedia tools and applications has created a need for the development of multimedia database management systems (MMDBMSs) as a tool for efficient organization, storage and retrieval of multimedia objects. We begin with a word about traditional database management systems (DBMSs). Then we present an overview of the MMDBMS research issues, challenges, methods, models, and architectures. We review the state of the art and research contributions from related disciplines. Finally, we consider possibilities and probabilities for MMDBMS research in the future.     

Global lock escalation in database management systems

Since database management systems (DBMSs) have limited lock resources, transactions requesting locks beyond the limit must be aborted, degrading the performance abruptly. Lock escalation can be effectively used in such circumstances to alleviate the problem. Many lock escalation methods have been proposed and implemented in commercial DBMSs. However, they have certain problems due to the local nature of their decisions on when to execute lock escalation. In this paper, we propose a new lock escalation method, global lock escalation, that makes such decision globally based on the total number of locks. Through extensive simulation, we show that the global lock escalation method outperforms the existing ones significantly. Especially, we show that the number of concurrent transactions allowable increases by 2-16 times. We believe our method can be easily implemented in the commercial DBMSs enhancing the performance significantly under excessive lock requests.     

HOW EFFECTIVE IS DATA RESOURCE MANAGEMENT?Reassessing Strategic Objectives

For more than a decade, data base management systems (DBMSs) have been proclaimed as the panacea for data integration and redundancy problems. Are organizations reaping the benefits of data base technology? What specific data resource management tasks have they failed to address effectively? A study of 276 organizations seeks to address these questions and to describe and diagnose the data resource management problems that corporations face today.     

PolarDB: An infrastructure for specialized NoSQL datebases and DBMS

This paper presents a new infrastructure for creating specialized databases and database management systems (DBMSs). Some principles of this infrastructure are formulated based on an analysis of various NoSQL solutions. The main features of the proposed approach are: (a) a flexible system of type definitions that allows one to create data structures based on different paradigms and (b) different forms of supporting structured data and mapping them onto the file system. Experiments are carried out to implement RDF graphs, relational tables, name tables, and object-relational mappings. The proposed approach allows one to solve certain problems of developing new technologies for working with Big Data.     

Survey of DBMS Use and Satisfaction

User-friendly PC-based data base management systems (DBMSs) have not displaced their mainframe counterparts. On the contrary, this survey reveals that an overwhelming majority of corporate users employ one of two mainframe-based systems, citing vendor support, performance, and reliability as their reasons for doing so.     

Fine-grained updates in database management systems for flash memory

The growing storage capacity of flash memory (up to 640 GB) and the proliferation of small mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones makes it attractive to build database management systems (DBMSs) on top of flash memory. However, most existing DBMSs are designed to run on hard disk drives. The unique characteristics of flash memory make the direct application of these existing DBMSs to flash memory very energy inefficient and slow. The relatively few DBMSs that are designed for flash suffer from two major short-comings. First, they do not take full advantage of the fact that updates to tuples usually only involve a small percentage of the attributes. A tuple refers to a row of a table in a database. Second, they do not cater for the asymmetry of write versus read costs of flash memory when designing the buffer replacement algorithm. In this paper, we have developed algorithms that address both of these short-comings. We overcome the first short-coming by partitioning tables into columns and then group the columns based on which columns are read or updated together. To this end, we developed an algorithm that uses a cost-based approach, which produces optimal column groupings for a given workload. We also propose a heuristic solution to the partitioning problem. The second short-coming is overcome by the design of the buffer replacement algorithm that automatically determines which page to evict from buffer based on a cost model that minimizes the expected read and write energy usage. Experiments using the TPC-C benchmark [S.T. Leutenegger, D. Dias, A modeling study of the TPC-C benchmark, in: Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD, 1993, pp. 22-31] show that our approach produces up to 40-fold in energy usage savings compared to the state-of-the-art in-page logging approach.     

Survey of DBMS Use and Satisfaction

User–friendly PC–based data base management systems (DBMSs) have not displaced their mainframe counterparts. On the contrary, this survey reveals that an overwhelming majority of corporate users employ one of two mainframe–based systems, citing vendor support, performance, and reliability as their reasons for doing so.     

Knowledge engineering and CAD

The technology of Computer Aided Design (CAD) has rapidly been changing the processes of machine design, especially in detail and production design. Conventional CAD systems are necessary in production design where precise geometrical data are indispensable, but we can point out some problems of those systems from a point of view of the total machine design process. Though the main aim of introducing CAD systems is to increase designers' creativities, it is doubtful whether designers are really supported by such CAD systems. We think that knowledge engineering is useful to improve such situations. In this paper, we discuss these problems and we study the feasibilities of future CAD systems that can really help designers very intelligently and efficiently. We also show some results of our experimental systems applying knowledge engineering.     

Evaluating Microcomputer DBMSs

The improper use of commercial data base management systems (DBMSs) has been a major problem throughout the history of data base management. With the emergence of microcomputers, the selection of the appropriate DBMS for a user' s particular applications environment can be difficult. This column reviews and discusses approaches toward evaluating a DBMS and provides examples that illustrate the application of these approaches to microcomputer DBMSs. IS managers would benefit by following this column' s three-step evaluation framework     

Computer assistance in design engineering

The design engineering process is analysed from a cognitive ergonomics point of view, relating it to models of problem-solving and cognitive skills. Observations from several Swedish studies are discussed in this framework. Results indicate that CAD systems require some re-thinking; in particular concepts related to the computer storage have to be incorporated in the problem space of design. As to heuristics, CAD systems seem to offer a wide variety of working. Cognitive skills related to CAD seem to be easily acquired, although the transition between different CAD systems will cause some initial problems. In general it is found that current CAD systems mainly support the detail design phase. Some ideas for future systems which would support the conceptual design phase in addition are discussed.