PicoDBMS: Scaling down database techniques for the smartcard

Smartcards are the most secure portable computing device today. They have been used successfully in applications involving money, and proprietary and personal data (such as banking, healthcare, insurance, etc.). As smartcards get more powerful (with 32-bit CPU and more than 1 MB of stable memory in the next versions) and become multi-application, the need for database management arises. However, smartcards have severe hardware limitations (very slow write, very little RAM, constrained stable memory, no autonomy, etc.) which make traditional database technology irrelevant. The major problem is scaling down database techniques so they perform well under these limitations. In this paper, we give an in-depth analysis of this problem and propose a PicoDBMS solution based on highly compact data structures, query execution without RAM, and specific techniques for atomicity and durability. We show the effectiveness of our techniques through performance evaluation. Received: 15 October 2000 / Accepted: 15 April 2001 Published online: 23 July 2001