Lecture 4:

DBMS Architecture
Sept. 6 2006

ChengXiang Zhai

Most slides are adapted from Kevin Chang’s lecture slides

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 DBMS Mission Statement
• Simply: maintenance and computation of data
Data Operations Results

• But how to do it?

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 DBMS Architecture
User/Web Forms/Applications/DBA
query transaction

Query Parser Transaction Manager

Query Rewriter

Query Optimizer Lock Manager Logging &

Recovery
Query Executor

Files & Access Methods

Buffers Lock Tables
Buffer Manager
Main Memory
Storage Manager

Storage
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 A Design Dilemma
• To what extent should we reuse OS services?
• Reuse as much as we can
– Performance problem (inefficient)
– Lack of control (incorrect crash recovery)

• Replicating some OS functions (“mini OS”)

– Have its own buffer pool
– Directly manage record structures with files
–…

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 OS vs. DBMS
• Conjecture: Perhaps pretty close
• Proof:
– There exists someone who can write popular
textbooks in both OS and DBMS!
[Operating | Database] System Concepts

– Jim Gray is from OS background!

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 OS vs. DBMS Similarities??
• What do they manage?
• What do they provide?

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 OS vs. DBMS: Similarities
• Purpose of an OS:
– managing hardware
– presenting interface abstraction to applications

• DBMS is in some sense an OS?

– DBMS manages data
– presenting interface abstraction to applications

• Both as API for application development!

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 Applications built upon DBMS
• ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning
– SAP, Baan, PeopleSoft, Oracle, IBM,...

• CRM: Customer Relationship Management

– E.phiphany, Siebel, Vantive, Oracle, IBM, ...

• SCM: Supply Chain Management

– Trilogy, i2, Oracle, IBM, ...

• A lot more in the Info Tech era:

– e-business software
– scientific data
– multimedia
– data analysis and decision support

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 OS vs. DBMS: Related Concepts
• Process Management  What DB concepts?
– process synchronization
– deadlock handling
• Storage management  What DB concepts?
– virtual memory
– file system
• Protection and security  What DB concepts?
– authentication
– access control

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 OS vs. DBMS: Differences??

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 OS vs. DBMS: Differences
• DBMS: Top-down to encapsulate high-level semantics!
– Data
• data with particular logical structures
– Queries
• query language with well defined operations
– Transactions
• transactions with ACID properties

• OS: Bottom-up to present low-level hardware

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DBMS on top of OS: Relations vs. File
system
• Data object abstraction
– file: array of characters
– relation: set of tuples

• Physical contiguity:
– large DB files want clustering of blocks
– extent: larger granularity allocation unit
• sol1: managing raw disks by DBMS
• sol2: simulate by managing free spaces in DBMS

• Multiple trees (access methods)

– file access: directory hierarchy (user access method)
– block access: inodes
– tuple access: DBMS indexes

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 DBMS on top of OS: BM vs. VM
• Query-aware replacement needed for performance
– not always LRU

• Examples?
– how about sort-merge join??

– how about nested-loop join??

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 DBMS on top of OS: BM vs. VM
• System-controlled replacement needed for correctness
– not always LRU

• Examples?

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 Not Really OS Problems: Deferred Update
Semantics
• Update emp.sal = 0.8*emp.sal if emp.sal > mgr.sal
empname sal manager
Smith 10k Brown
Jones 9k
Brown 11k Jones

– what are the possible semantics?

• INGRES solution: deferred updates

– buffer updates in intentions list for actual updates (also
serve as redo log)
– an example of “needing buffer knowledge in DBMS”, so
perhaps not sensible to do BM totally in OS

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As the data model and application
context change,
so does the DBMS architecture…

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 Post-Relational DB Projects
• Motivation:
– RDBMS not powerful enough for non-administrative data-
intensive applications such as: CAD/CAM, GIS…

• Buzz terms: object-oriented, extensible

• Sample projects
– Postgres: U.C. Berkeley
– Starburst: IBM Almaden – “highly extensible”
• after System R (relational), R* (distributed)
• ultimately finding its way into IBM DB2 UDB
– Exodus: U. Wisconsin
• not a complete DB; an OO-style storage manager toolkit
• followed by Shore at Wisconsin, Predator at Cornell

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 POSTGRES: Post INGRES
Stonebraker, U.C. Berkeley
• 1977-1985: INGRES
– among the first relational DB implementation
  Ingres Inc. --> ..  acquired by Computer
Associates

• 1986-1994: POSTGRES
– among the first object-relational DB implementation
  Illustra  acauqired by Informix
– PostgreSQL (the SQL version)

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 RDBMS: the Relational Root
• Data model: (Codd, 1970’s)
– a database is a set of relations
– relation of n attributes: a set of n-tuples
– n-tuple: (v1, …, vn), where vi is in domain Si

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 Relational Model: Normal Forms
• Basic: 1NF (First Normal Form)
– implicitly required in the relation model
– definition:
• only simple domains of atomic elements (Codd)
• simple domains represent the base (built-in) types

– ? why?

• “Stronger” normal forms:

– 4NF, Boyce-Codd Normal Form, 3NF, 2NF, …
– ? why?

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 Normalizing Relations: Example
• Unnormalized relation of book “objects”:

Books: title authors date

great future {smith, jones} 4/01/01
career {jones} 7/12/00

• Normalized relations: by decomposition

Books: title day month year
great future 4 1 01
career 7 12 00

Books: title authors

great future smith
great future jones
career jones

• ?? Problems of the relational model?

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 Relational Model Problems
“A relational DB is like a garage that forces you to take your car apart and
store the pieces in little drawers.” (some researcher)
• “Object” notion lost by decomposition
– non-intuitive: object is decomposed into several relations
– inefficient: a lot of online assembling by joins
• Base types are too restrictive
– integers and strings are very primitive
– data “types” are typically application specific
• Relational algebra is the only allowed operation
– simple, declarative, but also restrictive
– application = host language + embedded SQL

• ?? How to remedy these problems?

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 Quest for a Richer Model?
• Object-oriented data model

• Extensible ADTs

• Programming-language constructs

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 ORDBMS vs. OODBMS
• Question: How important is the relation?
• ORDBMS:
– RDBMS + OO features #
– query-based

• OODBMS:
– OO PL + database features (persistent objects)
– programming-based

• Meeting in the middle

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 Stonebraker’s Matrix

Simple Data Complex Data

Query RDBMS ORDBMS

No Query File System OODBMS

• Prediction: ORDBMS will dominate

– evidence: big DB players are all on this side

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 Object Orientation Concepts
• Classes:
– classes as types
– encapsulation: interface + implementation
– inheritance: building class hierarchies
• Objects:
– complex objects:
• built from constructors, e.g., set-of, array, nested objs
– object identity (OID):
• system generated as unique object reference
• enables (efficient) object linking and navigation

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 POSTGRES Data Model
POSTGRES data model:
• OO constructs
– classes as relations
• object (class instance) = tuple
• object-id = tuple-id
• method = attribute or function of attributes
– inheritance (multiple parents)

• ADT constructs:
– types
– functions

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 POSTGRES Functions
• Arbitrary C functions
– e.g.: overpaid(Employee)
– arbitrary semantics-- not optimized
– no fancy access methods-- typically sequential scan

• Binary operators
– “hints” to provide semantics
– extensible access methods
• extensible B+tree or user-defined index

• PostQuel procedures
– parameterized queries as functions
– e.g.: sal-lookup(name):
retrieve Emp.salary where Emp.name = name

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 POSTGRES Storage System
We were guided by a missionary zeal to do something different…
• No-overwrite system
• Logging:
– old values are not overwritten-- no value logging necessary
– log only needs to keep transaction state (commit/abort/going)
– ?? crash recovery-- how?

• Vacuum-cleaner daemon to archive historical data

• Advantages:
– recovery is cheap
– time travel is easy

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 Storage System: Problems
• Problems
– flushing differential data (why?) by commit time can be costly
• unless “stable” main memory
• more costly than sequentially writing out logs – why ??
– reads have to stitch together current picture

• And, yes, there are lots details unexplored or unexplained

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 Questing for the Right Models
Speaking about knowledge representation– The simple
relational model is by far the only successful KR
paradigm.
When the relational model came along, the network guys
resisted and their companies went under. …
When the OO model came along, the relational guys absorb
its best, and their companies prospered again!
-- Jeffery Ullman

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 What You Should Know
• What are some major limitations of services provided
by an OS in supporting a DBMS?
• In response to such limitations, what does a DBMS
do?
• As the data model and task environment change, the
architecture will also need to change

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 Carry Away Messages
• One usually doesn’t fit all!
– An OS is designed to serve all kinds of applications, so it’s not optimal
for supporting a DBMS
– Other examples: a search engine is designed to serve all kinds of
people, so it’s not optimal for a particular person (personalized search)
• When a problem is recognized, there are often opportunities for
breakthroughs in multiple areas
– DBMS could take over OS functions
– OS could provide more opportunities for customization

• From “day 1”, high efficiency has been the primary challenge/concern in
designing and implementing a DBMS; reliability may be the second major
concern
– In contrast, “accuracy of answers” is at least as important as efficiency
for a Web search engine
– In the future, accuracy of answers will likely become more important

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