The Architecture of an Autonomic, Resource-Aware, Workstation-Based Distributed Database System

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a novel workstation-based distributed database system that adapts to dynamic machine availability, aiming to provide interactive, durable data management on workstation networks.

Contribution

It introduces a new architecture for workstation-based databases that supports interactivity and durability, unlike existing systems that are either static or only support batch processing.

Findings

The system achieves performance comparable to traditional clustered databases.

It maintains high availability during machine failures.

The design effectively utilizes spare capacity of workstations.

Abstract

Distributed software systems that are designed to run over workstation machines within organisations are termed workstation-based. Workstation-based systems are characterised by dynamically changing sets of machines that are used primarily for other, user-centric tasks. They must be able to adapt to and utilize spare capacity when and where it is available, and ensure that the non-availability of an individual machine does not affect the availability of the system. This thesis focuses on the requirements and design of a workstation-based database system, which is motivated by an analysis of existing database architectures that are typically run over static, specially provisioned sets of machines. A typical clustered database system -- one that is run over a number of specially provisioned machines -- executes queries interactively, returning a synchronous response to applications, with its data made durable and resilient to the failure of machines. There are no existing workstation-based databases. Furthermore, other workstation-based systems do not attempt to achieve the requirements of interactivity and durability, because they are typically used to execute asynchronous batch processing jobs that tolerate data loss -- results can be re-computed. These systems use external servers to store the final results of computations rather than workstation machines. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a workstation-based database system and investigates its viability by evaluating its performance against existing clustered database systems and testing its availability during machine failures.