Issues and approaches to design of real-time database systems

ABSTRACT

Real-time database systems support applications which have severe performance constraints such as fast response time and continued operation in the face of catastrophic failures. Real-time database systems are still in the state of infancy, and issues and alternatives in their design are not very well explored. In this paper, we discuss issues in the design of real-time database systems and discuss different alternatives for resolving these issues. We discuss the aspects in which requirements and design issues of real-time database systems differ from those of conventional database systems. We discuss two approaches to design real-time database systems, viz., main memory resident databases and design by trading a feature (like serializability). We also discuss requirements in the design of real-time distributed database systems, and specifically discuss issues in the design of concurrency control and crash recovery. It is felt that long communication delays may be a factor in limiting the performance of real-time distributed database systems. We present a concurrency control algorithm for real-time distributed database systems whose performance is not limited by communication delays.

REFERENCES

• 1: 1. ATTAR, R., BERNSTEIN, P. A., AND GOODMAN, N., "Site Initialization, Recovery, and Backup in a Distributed Database System," IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering , pp. 645-650 (November 1984).
• 2: Dina Bitton, Panel: The effect of large main memory on database systems, Proceedings of the 1986 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, p.337-339, May 28-30, 1986, Washington, D.C., United States
• 3: 3. BLAUSTEIN, B. T., GARCIA-MOLINA, H., RIES, D. R., CHILENSKAS, R. M., AND KAUFMAN, C. W., "Maintaining Replicated Databases Even in Presense of Network Partitions," EASCON, pp. 353-360 (1983).
• 4: 4. CHAN, A., DAYAL, U., FOX, S., GOODMAN, N., SKEEN, D., AND RIES, D., "DDM: An Ada Compatible Distributed Database Manager," IEEE COMPCON Digests of Papers, (1983).
• 5: Susan B. Davidson , Hector Garcia-Molina , Dale Skeen, Consistency in a partitioned network: a survey, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.17 n.3, p.341-370, Sept. 1985 [doi>10.1145/5505.5508]
• 6: David J DeWitt , Randy H Katz , Frank Olken , Leonard D Shapiro , Michael R Stonebraker , David Wood, Implementation techniques for main memory database systems, Proceedings of the 1984 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 18-21, 1984, Boston, Massachusetts
• 7: Michael J. Fischer , Alan Michael, Sacrificing serializability to attain high availability of data in an unreliable network, Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD symposium on Principles of database systems, March 29-31, 1982, Los Angeles, California [doi>10.1145/588111.588124]
• 8: 8. GARCIA-MOLINA, H., "Performance Comparison of Two Update Algorithms For Distributed Databases," Proc. of 3rd Berkeley Workshop on Distributed Data Management and Computer Networks, pp. 108-119 (Aug. 1978).
• 9: Hector Garcia-Molina, Using semantic knowledge for transaction processing in a distributed database, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.8 n.2, p.186-213, June 1983 [doi>10.1145/319983.319985]
• 10: R B Hagmann, A Crash Recovery Scheme for a Memory-Resident Database System, IEEE Transactions on Computers, v.35 n.9, p.839-843, September 1986 [doi>10.1109/TC.1986.1676845]
• 11: Micael Hammer , David Shipman, Reliability mechanisms for SDD-1: a system for distributed databases, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.5 n.4, p.431-466, Dec. 1980 [doi>10.1145/320610.320621]
• 12: Leslie Lamport, Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system, Communications of the ACM, v.21 n.7, p.558-565, July 1978 [doi>10.1145/359545.359563]
• 13: Tobin J. Lehman , Michael J. Carey, Query processing in main memory database management systems, Proceedings of the 1986 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, p.239-250, May 28-30, 1986, Washington, D.C., United States
• 14: 14. MILENKOVIC, M., "Synchronization of Concurrent Updates in Redundant Distributed Databases," Distributed Data Bases, pp. 49-65 North-Holland Publishing Co., (1980).
• 15: Christos H. Papadimitriou, The serializability of concurrent database updates, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.26 n.4, p.631-653, Oct. 1979 [doi>10.1145/322154.322158]
• 16: 16. SALEM, K. AND GARCIA-MOLINA, H., "Crash Recovery Mechanisms for Main Storage Database Systems," Tech. Rep. CS-TR-034-86, Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, (April 1986).
• 17: Leonard D. Shapiro, Join processing in database systems with large main memories, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.11 n.3, p.239-264, Sept. 1986 [doi>10.1145/6314.6315]
• 18: M Singhal, Concurrency control algorithms and their performance in replicated database systems, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD, 1986
• 19: 19. SINGHAL, MUKESH AND AGRAWALA, A. K., "A Concurrency Control Algorithm and its Performance for Replicated Database Systems," Proc. of the 6th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (May 19-23, 1986).
• 20: 20. SON, S. H., "Using Replication for High Performance Database Support in Distributed Real-Time Systems," in the Proc. of the Symposium on Real-Time Systems, pp. 79-86 (December 1987).
• 21: 21. SON, S. H., "A Recovery Scheme for Database Systems with Large Main Memory," in the Proc. of the 11th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 422-427 (October 7-9, 1987).

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Real-time and embedded systems

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Concurrency

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Management, Performance