Emerging Database Technologies and Applications
Progression of Database Technology
Data Model 1960s to Mid1970s Network Hierarchical Mainframes 1970s to Mid-1980s Relational 1980s to Early 1990s Semantic Object-oriented Logic Faster PCs Workstations Database machines Back ends Graphics Menus Query-by-forms Standardized SQL 4GL Logic programming Business graphics Image output Future Merging data models with knowledge representation Hybrid models Client-server configuration Parallel processing Optical memories Multimedia Natural languages Speech input Freehand text Integrated database and programming languages
Database Hardware
Mainframes Minis PCs Query languages Forms
User Interface
None
Program Interface
Procedural
Embedded query languages
Presentation and Display
Reports
Report generators
Processing
Processing data
Generalized presentation managers Distributed, heterogeneous data and knowledge processing with multimedia information Information and Transaction processing Parallel database transaction processing Knowledge processing management
Current Trends in Technology
Distributed, heterogeneous environments Open systems More functionality Parallel database management
Next Generation of DBMSs
Active databases
Applications such as process control, power distribution/generation, workflow control, program trading, battle management, patient monitoring are not well served by passive DBMSs conditions defined on states of the database must be monitored and actions taken active databases support condition monitoring
Active Databases
Specification of events and conditions to be monitored
Actions Active DBMS
Queries and updates External events
Payoffs: No changes to applications DBMS optimizes rules Enhances DBMS functionality Meet the time-constrained requirements of applications
Issues in Active Databases
Efficiency
a large set of rules need to be managed and evaluated efficiently
Modes of rule execution
rules can be fired in an immediate, deferred, or detached mode in regard to the original transaction
Data model extension
specifying events, conditions, and actions
events: database operations (insert, delete, modify) temporal events (5 p.m. every day) user- or application-generated events (hardware failure)
Issues in Active Databases
Management of rules
ability to manipulate rules (add/delete/modify) mechanisms for enabling and disabling rules or rule sets
Supporting DBMS functions
examples: constraint management, maintenance of derived data, rule-based inferencing
Interaction with parts of DBMS
optimization of rules requires interaction with transaction manager, object manager, and scheduler
State of the Art in Active Databases
HiPAC (High Performance ACtive database system) research project at Xerox PROBE for battle management application (Computer Corporation of America) Event/Trigger Mechanism (Univ. of Karlsruhe) POSTGRES (Stonebraker, UC Berkeley) Starburst project at IBM Sybase supports simple triggers InterBase does not impose most of the restrictions seen in Sybase ORACLE v. 7, INGRES, INFORMIX, etc. provide some degree of rule and trigger support
Multimedia Databases
Applications:
documents and records management knowledge dissemination education and training marketing, advertising, retailing, travel real-time control and monitoring
Multimedia Databases
Multimedia IS are very complex; issues:
modeling, dealing with complex objects design (conceptual, logical, physical) not researched yet storage on standard devices presents problems retrieval opens up many issues performance problem solving efforts are experimental
Databases (fixed data structure) versus information retrieval (text) perspectives Requirements of multimedia/hypermedia data modeling and retrieval
query mechanism should have access to the links (?)
Multimedia Databases
Indexing of images
automatic object identification manual indexing
Open problems in text retrieval Multimedia information systems promise to bring about a marriage of the disciplines of information retrieval and database management
Spatial Database Management
The spatial semantics can be captured by three common representations:
solid representation
the space is divided into pieces
boundary representation
the spatial characteristics are represented by line segments or boundaries
abstract representation
relationships with spatial semantics, such as ABOVE, NEAR, IS NEXT TO, BEHIND, are used to associate entities
The PROBE project provided support for spatial data
Temporal Database Management
An one-dimensional case of spatial information Includes three types of support for time:
time points time intervals abstract relationships (before, after, during, simultaneously, concurrently, ...)
The history aspect of databases is important for project management, patient histories, maintenance histories, etc.
Temporal Database Management
A range of businesses (ex. finance, medical, legal, manufacturing) can benefit from quick access to historical and current data Limitations of current databases:
data become valid at the time they are recorded; no provision for distinguishing between transaction time and valid time no capability to preserve historical information
Until recently, inefficient storage capabilities made the temporal database concept not practical WORM and compression technology made it possible
Tuple Time Stamping
One proposed model is the Temporal Relational Model
Attributes, relations are divided into time-varying and non-time-varying For time-varying relations, two timestamp attributes are appended SQL is extended into Temporal SQL (TSQL)
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Salary 20K 25K 27K 30K
Position Typist Secretary Jr. Engineer Sr. Engineer
Start time End time 12 25 28 38 24 35 37 42
Open Problems
Reasoning with temporal information Processing information over valid-time and transaction-time databases Mixing temporal processing with active and deductive databases Integrating temporal information over heterogeneous environments
Update on Temporal DB Research
Recent Advances in Temporal Databases, J. Clifford and A. Tuzhilin, (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Workshop on Temporal Databases, Zurich, Switzerland, 17-18 September 1995, Springer, 1995. X, 362 pp. 80 figs. Softcover $79.00 ISBN 3-540-19945-4 Papers cover a wide range of topics from the highly theoretical through to reports on how temporal data bases can be used to solve real problems In addition to the technical papers, there are also summaries of two panel discussions which assess the recently-completed TSQL2 Language Design, and examine the need for additional research into the development of TSQL3 Together these papers provide a comprehensive overview of the latest research work into the area of temporal databases Also see URL: http://www.jcc.com/sql_tmpr.html
Extensible Database Management
Building DBMSs out of DBMS parts Assembling prewritten modules has advantages:
rapid and economical development technological improvements can quickly be incorporated proposed new algorithms can first be evaluated
Project GENESIS at the University of Texas
components of DBMS and interfaces among them are defined new DBMS can be configured within minutes plug-compatible modules are defined for access methods, query optimization, concurrency control, recovery, ...
Extensible Database Management
Project EXODUS at University of Wisconsin provides certain kernel facilities including storage manager and type manager type manager permits definition of hierarchies with multiple inheritance the storage object is a byte sequence of arbitrary size buffer management, concurrency control, recovery mechanisms are provided and can be modified type-independent index structures can be selected the language E, an C extension, adds the notion of persistent objects query processing includes query optimization and evaluation the DBI supplies the description of operators and methods to implement them the rule-based optimizer generates C source code the EXODUS storage manager was used by several vendors (incl. O2 )
Full-Functionality Approach
Building DBMS with extensive functionality Providing a wide set of features Projects PROBE and Starburst
active databases PROBE provides spatial query processing
POSTGRES also combines OO and active database capabilities with the relational model
Unified Database Management
Example of systems in this category is UniSQL
combines
power and ease of popular development tools OO development multimedia database integration
organization:
UniSQL/X provides C/S DBMS platform UniSQL/M allows access to relational and prerelational DBs UniSQL/4GE Tools for dynamically generating applications Visual Editor and Media Master allow for viewing and editing of schemas and for sophisticated report generation
the next generation of DBMSs is likely to be patterned after the UniSQL
