Oracle Database Management System Research Articles

The global paleomagnetic database: Current status

The Global Paleomagnetic Database (GPMDB) is a data base for paleomagnetic directions and pole positions. It was first compiled by Lock and McElhinny [1991] and made use of the PC version of the Oracle Database Management System, which at the time was the only PC system available that used SQL, the internationally recognized language for use with database management systems. Subsequently, the Oracle PC system became far too large and complex for the GPMDB, so the data base was transferred to Microsoft Access, which had just become available and also used SQL [McElhinny and Lock, 1996].

Role-based administration of user-role assignment: The URA97 model and its Oracle implementation

In role-based access control (RBAC) permissions are associated with roles, and users are made members of appropriate roles thereby acquiring the roles’ permissions. The principal motivation behind RBAC is to simplify administration. An appealing possibility is to use RBAC itself to manage RBAC, to further provide administrative convenience. In this paper we investigate one aspect of RBAC administration concerning assignment of users to roles. We define a role-based administrative model, called URA97 (User-Role Assignment ’97), for this purpose and describe its implementation in the Oracle database management system. Although our model is quite different from that built into Oracle, we demonstrate how to use Oracle stored procedures to implement it.

An analysis of database workload performance on simultaneous multithreaded processors

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is an architectural technique in which the processor issues multiple instructions from multiple threads each cycle. While SMT has been shown to be effective on scientific workloads, its performance on database systems is still an open question. In particular, database systems have poor cache performance, and the addition of multithreading has the potential to exacerbate cache conflicts.This paper examines database performance on SMT processors using traces of the Oracle database management system. Our research makes three contributions. First, it characterizes the memory-system behavior of database systems running on-line transaction processing and decision support system workloads. Our data show that while DBMS workloads have large memory footprints, there is substantial data reuse in a small, cacheable "critical" working set. Second, we show that the additional data cache conflicts caused by simultaneous multithreaded instruction scheduling can be nearly eliminated by the proper choice of software-directed policies for virtual-to-physical page mapping and per-process address offsetting. Our results demonstrate that with the best policy choices, D-cache miss rates on an 8-context SMT are roughly equivalent to those on a single-threaded superscalar. Multithreading also leads to better interthread instruction cache sharing, reducing I-cache miss rates by up to 35%. Third, we show that SMT's latency tolerance is highly effective for database applications. For example, using a memory-intensive OLTP workload, an 8-context SMT processor achieves a 3-fold increase in instruction throughput over a single-threaded superscalar with similar resources.

Tool management in flexible manufacturing systems

Describes a systematic way to design and develop a generic relational model for a tool management system in FMS. Reviews the need for tool database management in FMS and discusses the advantages. Highlights the requirements for a successful tool database and presents a systematic way to design and develop a relational tool database. The developed tool database is implemented by using the ORACLE database management system. Finally, presents four demonstration runs.

Object systems over relational databases

The purpose of this document is to present a set of mechanisms and concepts for object systems based on an external relational database. The object space may be shared among a set of applications which use the standard query language SQL as its principal data access mechanism. Methods are not a concern of this paper and may be handled by callout to separate execution engines. Internally a semantic data model is used including reverse links. A new formalism for describing such a complex data model is presented in the paper. An object manager embodying these ideas is fully implemented for the Oracle database management system.

AUTOSPEC: Automatic Motor Specification System

The AUTOSPEC system is an automatic motor specification software system that primarily serves to non-interactively produce bill of materials from sales orders. At the core, the system applies Expert System and coordinated Relational Database technology to effect an object-oriented implementation. Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools supporting object-oriented analysis (OOA) and an object-oriented design (OOD) approach were used to provide a smooth transition of the software design effort into production at motor manufacturing plants. The powerful mechanisms of class inheritance, and forward chaining, as well as graphical program construction provided by the ProKappa Knowledge Base System are employed. Motif Graphical User Interface (GUI) development was carried out using UIM/X, a WYSIWYG screen development tool. The ORACLE Database Management System was used to provide data independence necessary for engineering system interfacing.

An evaluation of HP-UX (UNIX) for database protection using the European ITSEC

This paper describes an evaluation of the effectiveness of two versions of Hewlett Packard's UNIX operating system, HP-UX, to protect a sensitive database set up under the ORACLE Data Base Management System, using Version 1.0 of the European Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria (ITSEC) as the basis for the evaluation. An outline of these criteria is given, along with mention of the US Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC) for comparison purposes. The research project reported in this paper was aimed at determining the level of effort required to perform such an evaluation and also the relevance of the ITSEC to commercial environments where information systems security, incorporating authenticity, integrity and privacy, are of paramount concern. Two successive releases of the HP-UX operating system were found to be markedly different when evaluated from the ITSEC point of view, with the latter version being quite effective in maintaining security parameters. It was also concluded that evaluations are time consuming but can have positive implications for commercial systems developers.

Need for “flexibility” in a conceptual model

The translation of one data model into another has become necessary. Database design methodologies stipulate that a conceptual model should be created prior to implementing a new database system. It is then, usually, the translation of this conceptual model into the physical model of a commercial database management system (DBMS) that is a necessity (e.g., The translation of the entity-relationship model into a relational DBMS). However, more and more we are seeing the translation of the data models in currently implemented conventional file and database systems into conceptual models (e.g., The translation of an ORACLE DBMS into an entity-relationship model). It is the conceptual model that is produced from the ‘reverse’ translation process that we address here; however, the ideas of flexibility can be applied to new database designs also. Since several different reverse translation algorithms have been developed, the questions that arise are: How do we know the resulting conceptual models are accurate? Does the resulting model contain enough information to be useful to database designers and which one is easier for the database designer to work with and to use as a communication tool with users or to develop new databases? The problem is that resulting conceptual data models from two different algorithms may differ even in the data objects obtained, and yet both be equivalent to the original model.