Beyond Relational Databases

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Beyond Relational Databases

• Written by Margo Seltzer
• Presented by Mark Simko

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Overview

• Intro
• Relational Prehistory
• New Frontier
• Emerging Data Needs
• Flexible Solutions
• Modularity
• Configurability
• Questions

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Intro

• Number and variety of computing devices
  increasing rapidly
• Applications impossible a few years ago are
  popping up everywhere
• Greater need for data storage and retrieval
• Examples
• Gaming applications
• GPS
• Messaging applications

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Intro

• Relational Databases
• Highly successful past 30 years
• SQL infused
• Evolved over the years

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Relational Prehistory

• IBM and University of California _at_ Berkeley circa
  1970s
• Programmers had to rewrite large chunks of code
  whenever database changed
• Solved the problem in two ways
• Hid the physical organization of DB from
  application, only saw logical view
• Used a declarative language to describe data,
  rather then a collection of function calls

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New Frontier

• 1998 DB researches noticed DBMS were becoming too
  complex
• Configuration and management needs to become
  automated
• Become more modular and simple, component-based
  building blocks
• One size no longer fits all Michael Stonebraker

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Emerging Data Needs

• Data Warehousing
• Directory Services
• Web Search
• Mobile Device Caching
• XML Management
• Stream Processing

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Flexible Solutions

• Back to basis approach
• Every application build its own data storage
  service
• Lots of data management options
• Each addresses a particular application class,
  SQL is used to hide different capabilities
• Produce storage engine that can be configurable
• Individual can tweak it to their own requirements
• Allows concentrated investment in a single
  storage system, improving quality

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Flexible Solutions

• Two properties a solution must possess to address
  the wide range of emerging applications
• Modularity
• Configurability

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Modularity

• Tools allow you to manage
• Size
• Allowing smaller, simpler applications
• Complexity
• Some programs are low concurrency, others medium
  and some high
• Enables the applications and data management
  capabilities to interact seamlessly

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Configurability

• Refers to how well a system can be matched to its
  environment and application needs
• For discussion, this article covers
• Hardware
• Environment (operating system)
• Applications software architecture
• Natural data format of application

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Configurability

• Hardware
• Cpu speed
• Memory size
• Physical storage capabilities (RAM, magnetic
  flash)
• Compression

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Configurability

• Environment (operating system)
• Cell phones
• Laptops
• Servers
• PDAs
• GPSs
• MP3 players

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Configurability

• Applications software architecture
• Single thread
• Collection of cooperating processes (each single
  threaded)
• Multiple threads of control in a single process
• Multiple multithreaded processes
• Event-based architecture

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Configurability

• Natural data format of application
• Physical Clustering
• Indexing Mechanism
• Internal Structure of items in the database

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New Style Databasesfor New Style Problems

• Old style database systems solve old style
  problems
• We need new style database systems to solve new
  style problems
• Conventional Database Management Systems arent
  going away, but we need configurable Database
  systems to solve todays and tomorrows problems

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Questions?