Buffer management in real-time active database systems

Abstract

Real-time, active database systems (RTADBSs) have attracted the attention of researchers in recent times. Such systems are envisioned as control systems for environments as diverse as process control, network management and automated financial trading. Sensors distributed throughout the system report the state of the system to the database. Unacceptable state reports typically result in corrective actions being triggered with deadlines. Thus RTADBSs incorporate both real-time as well as active characteristics. In this paper we study buffer management in RTADBSs. Buffer management is recognized as not being a well studied area in real-time systems. As a result of our work, we postulate (Prefetching Anticipatorily and Priority basEd Replacement) (PAPER), a new buffer management scheme that relies on two strategies: prefetching and priority based buffer replacement. We report the result of studies of the performance of PAPER, as compared to that of existing buffer management algorithms. The insights derived from this paper impact both real-time database systems as well as RTADBSs.