General Purpose Database Management System Research Articles

Time Series Management Systems: A Survey

The collection of time series data increases as more monitoring and automation are being deployed. These deployments range in scale from an Internet of things (IoT) device located in a household to enormous distributed Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) producing large volumes of data at high velocity. To store and analyze these vast amounts of data, specialized Time Series Management Systems (TSMSs) have been developed to overcome the limitations of general purpose Database Management Systems (DBMSs) for times series management. In this paper, we present a thorough analysis and classification of TSMSs developed through academic or industrial research and documented through publications. Our classification is organized into categories based on the architectures observed during our analysis. In addition, we provide an overview of each system with a focus on the motivational use case that drove the development of the system, the functionality for storage and querying of time series a system implements, the components the system is composed of, and the capabilities of each system with regard to Stream Processing and Approximate Query Processing (AQP). Last, we provide a summary of research directions proposed by other researchers in the field and present our vision for a next generation TSMS.

Distributed secondo: an extensible and scalable database management system

This paper describes a novel method to couple a standalone database management system (DBMS) with a highly scalable key-value store. The system employs Apache Cassandra as data storage and the extensible DBMS Secondo as a query processing engine. The resulting system is a distributed, general-purpose DBMS which is highly scalable and fault tolerant. The logical ring of Cassandra is used to split up input data into smaller units of work (UOWs), which can be processed independently. A decentralized algorithm is responsible to assign the UOWs to query processing nodes. In case of a node failure, UOWs are recalculated on a different node. All the data models (e.g. relational, spatial and spatio-temporal) and functions (e.g. filter, aggregates, joins and spatial-joins) implemented in Secondo can be used in a scalable way without changing the implementation. Many aspects of the distribution are hidden from the user. Existing sequential queries can be easily converted into parallel ones.

Real-Time Query Processing on Live Videos in Networks of Distributed Cameras

With the proliferation of inexpensive cameras and the availability of high-speed wired and wireless networks, systems of distributed cameras are becoming an enabling technology for a broad range of interdisciplinary applications in domains such as public safety and security, manufacturing, transportation, and healthcare. Today’s live video processing systems on networks of distributed cameras, however, are designed for specific classes of applications. To provide a generic query processing platform for applications of distributed camera networks, the authors designed and implemented a new class of general purpose database management systems, the live video database management system (LVDBMS). The authors view networked video cameras as a special class of interconnected storage devices, and allow the user to formulate ad hoc queries expressed over real-time live video feeds. This paper introduces their system and presents the live video data model, the query language, and the query processing and optimization technique.

On the Use of a Reflective Architecture to Augment Database Management Systems

The Database Management System (DBMS) used to be a commodity soft- ware component, with well known standard interfaces and semantics. However, the performance and reliability expectations being placed on DBMSs have increased the demand for a variety add-ons, that augment the functionality of the database in a wide range of deployment scenarios, offering support for features such as clustering, replica- tion, and self-management, among others. A well known software engineering approach to systems with such requirements is reflection. Unfortunately, standard reflective in- terfaces in DBMSs are very limited. Some of these limitations may be circumvented by implementing reflective features as a wrapper to the DBMS server. Unfortunately, these solutions comes at the expense of a large development effort and significant per- formance penalty. In this paper we propose a general purpose DBMS reflection architecture and interface, that supports multiple extensions while, at the same time, admitting efficient imple- mentations. We illustrate the usefulness of our proposal with concrete examples, and evaluate its cost and performance under different implementation strategies.

Generalization of strategies for product data modeling with special reference to Instance-As-Type problem

This paper presents a comprehensive discussion of the so-called Instance-As-Type (IAT) phenomenon which is observed in the development of complex engineering/product design databases. Basically, IAT reflects a kind of data dependency in databases; in particular it means that a data object appears both in the form of a type and in the form of an instance. As it is well known, uncontrolled data dependencies may lead to information inconsistency and thus severely affect the effectiveness of the product development process. It is therefore very important to develop strategies to cope with IAT in the design of complex engineering databases. The contributions of this paper lie in several aspects. It has provided a more comprehensive description of IAT, including an argument that IAT is in fact not a kind of data redundancy but data dependency. It has also clarified the two and only two feasible strategies for dealing with IAT, i.e., one making IAT absent in a database (strategy 1) and the other preserving IAT by providing a means to control it (strategy 2). The advantages and disadvantages associated with these two strategies have been discussed. Finally, this paper has pointed out that the implementation of strategy 2 can be realized by using general-purpose database management systems (DBMSs) by developing an enhanced program module. A general way to implement this module has also been outlined.

A coherent architecture for a temporal object data base management system

The last decade has witnessed the emergence of practical general-purpose data base management systems (DBMS) as “state of the art” technology. In consequence, these systems are now widely used in a variety of application environments. However, many such systems were designed to capture current data, i.e., a snapshot of reality, but are insufficient for those applications in which past or future data are also required. Even so, there has been little effort to design temporal DBMS, and currently there are no prominent commercial temporal DBMS. This article identifies, explores, and provides an approach to designing a coherent architecture for a temporal object DBMS (TODBMS). It specifically involves the design, development, and implementation of TODBMS. We introduce the basic features of our system and provide an overview of the functionalities supported. In addition, we identify the major components of TODBMS and define the types of services each component should offer, as well as common abstractions and interfaces for these components. Application environments include management and geographic information systems, data base visualization, and robotics.

Integrated Clinical Decision Support Using an Object-Oriented Database Management System

Clinical decision support systems assist in diagnosis, alert to abnormal conditions, and manage patient data. Such systems tend to emphasize one of these features at the expense of the others and tend to be developed on an ad hoc basis. In this work, a technique is developed for creating an integrated clinical decision support system wholly within a general-purpose object-oriented database management system. The diagnostic and alerting requirements are accomplished with encapsulated methods and a novel use of the object-oriented database management class-hierarchy structure. The patient data management requirement is satisfied by the normal data management capabilities of the object-oriented DBMS.

LATOR — professional database management system for local networks

LATOR is a general purpose database management system for establishing and maintaining a database environment for a set of computers connected in a local area network. Consistency of data structures is preserved automatically. The philosophy of LATOR is different from that of the commercial database management systems, like dBASE or DATAFLEX, etc., since its kernel is resident in a dedicated machine called a SERVER.

Perspective on object databases

Databases based on object-oriented and semantic database models (‘object databases’) represent significant advances over their record-based historical predecessors. In the context of general-purpose database management systems, the fundamentals of object database models are examined. Comparisons are made with record-based databases, as represented by relational database technology. The principal concepts underlying structurally object-oriented (semantic) database models are presented. Finally, a historical perspective on the evolution of object database technology is provided.

A software tool for research in linguistics and lexicography: Application to Somali

General-purpose database management systems, whose structure is built in, are not an appropriate solution to situations where problems of translation or areas of research cannot be bounded in advance, for example, when lexicography and linguistic research are closely related. Consequently, an original system has been developed, and is being applied to linguistic and lexicographical data on the Somali language.

Applications of Byzantine agreement in database systems

In this paper we study when and how B Byzantine agreement protocol can he used in general-purpose database management systems. We present an overview of the failure model used for Byzantine agreement, and of the protocol itself. We then present correctness criteria for database processing in this failure environment and discuss strategies for satisfying them. In doing this, we present new failure models for input/output nodes and study ways to distribute input transactions to processing nodes under these models. Finally, we investigate applications of Byzantine agreement protocols in the more common failure environment where processors are assumed to halt after a failure.

The Physician Data Query (PDQ) cancer information system.

PDQ is an online database that provides information about the prognosis and treatment of all major types of cancer. It represents a major effort by the NCI to communicate advances in cancer treatment using computer technology, and serves as a major component of the Institute's program to reduce cancer mortality nationwide. PDQ utilizes a modern large-scale computer to provide processing speed, a general purpose database management system to provide retrieval and display functions, and commercial telecommunication networks to provide online access to up-to-date information on cancer treatment. A series of user-friendly menus allow searching, browsing, and displaying without having to learn a specialized search language. PDQ is accessible through the National Library of Medicine's computer system via a computer terminal or personal computer and is available to the medical community at over 2000 medical libraries and centers and through individual access codes. PDQ is also available as an online database under a special license agreement with NCI through two medical information systems produced by commercial database vendors: BRS/Saunders' COLLEAGUE and Mead Data Central's MEDIS.

Remotely-sensed geophysical databases

This paper presents the characteristics of scientific remotely-sensed databases that are relevant to --- and pose unique challenges for --- general-purpose database management systems (DBMSs). We describe a prototype system that integrates geophysical data and its metadata from both satellite and in situ sources, using a relational general-purpose DBMS to manage the catalog and observational data, and a video optical disk to archive images. Based upon our experience with this application, we suggest augmentations to DBMSs that would facilitate their use not only for scientific databases, but also for engineering, document, and even commercial database applications.

Binary-Relational Storage Structures

Any database, no matter how complex, can be represented as a set of binary-relationships. Consequently, a structure which can store such binary-relationships is logically sufficient as the storage mechanism for a general purpose database management system. For certain applications, the advantages of using such a structure would appear to outweigh the disadvantages. Surprisingly, however, very few systems have been built which use a binary-relational storage structure. The main reason would appear to be the difficulty of implementing such structures efficiently.

A Survey of Developments in Distributed Data Base Management Systems

Distributed data base management systems extend the capacities of computing systems to give many people access to a wide range of information. These systems, which arise from the combination of recent important advances in computer networks with general-purpose data base management systems, should shortly represent another significant step in commercial system development. So it is not surprising that they have been the focus of much research and development activity in both the academic and industrial environments.