Distributed Databases

Chapter 25

Distributed Databases

_In this chapter we turn our attention to distributed databases (DDBs), distributed database management systems (DDBMSs), and how the client-server architecture is used as a platform for database application development. Distributed databases bring the advantages of distributed computing to the database management domain. A distributed computing system consists of a number of processing elements, not necessarily homogeneous, that are interconnected by a computer network, and that cooperate in performing certain assigned tasks. As a general goal, distributed computing systems partition a big, unmanageable problem into smaller pieces and solve it efficiently in a coordinated manner. The economic viability of this approach stems from two reasons: more computing power is harnessed to solve a complex task, and each autonomous processing element can be managed independently to develop its own applications.

DDB technology resulted from a merger of two technologies: database technology, and network and data communication technology. Computer networks allow distributed processing of data. Traditional databases, on the other hand, focus on providing centralized, controlled access to data. Distributed databases allow an integration of information and its processing by applications that may themselves be centralized or distributed.

Several distributed database prototype systems were developed in the 1980s to address the issues of data distribution, distributed query and transaction process-ing, distributed database metadata management, and other topics. However, a full-scale comprehensive DDBMS that implements the functionality and techniques proposed in DDB research never emerged as a commercially viable product. Most major vendors redirected their efforts from developing a pure DDBMS product into developing systems based on client-server concepts, or toward developing technolo-gies for accessing distributed heterogeneous data sources.

Organizations continue to be interested in the decentralization of processing (at the system level) while achieving an integration of the information resources (at the logical level) within their geographically distributed systems of databases, applications, and users. There is now a general endorsement of the client-server approach to application development, and the three-tier approach to Web applications development (see Section 2.5).

In this chapter we discuss distributed databases, their architectural variations, and concepts central to data distribution and the management of distributed data. Details of the advances in communication technologies facilitating the development of DDBs are outside the scope of this book; see the texts on data communications and networking listed in the Selected Bibliography at the end of this chapter.

Section 25.1 introduces distributed database management and related concepts. Sections 25.2 and 25.3 introduce different types of distributed database systems and their architectures, including federated and multidatabase systems. The problems of heterogeneity and the needs of autonomy in federated database systems are also highlighted. Detailed issues of distributed database design, involving fragmenting of data and distributing it over multiple sites with possible replication, are discussed in Section 25.4. Sections 25.5 and 25.6 introduce distributed database query and trans-action processing techniques, respectively. Section 25.7 gives an overview of the concurrency control and recovery in distributed databases. Section 25.8 discusses catalog management schemes in distributed databases. In Section 25.9, we briefly discuss current trends in distributed databases such as cloud computing and peer-to-peer databases. Section 25.10 discusses distributed database features of the Oracle RDBMS. Section 25.11 summarizes the chapter.

For a short introduction to the topic of distributed databases, Sections 25.1, 25.2, and 25.3 may be covered.