CERN/IT/DB

Object / Object-Relational Database Management Systems

Brief History & Outlook Jamie Shiers, IT-DB, CERN

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Overview
Evolution of Object & Object-Relational DBMS Status of Market today Outlook

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Definitions
From Stonebraker: Object-Relational DBMSs: The Next Great Wave
 Filesystems: no query  RDBMS: query, simple data  ODBMS: no (poor) query, complex data  ORDBMS: query & complex
(Picture Akmal Chaudri)

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RDBMS
E.F.Codd: A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks , CACM 13, 6 (June 1970) pp 377 387
 See http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/db/aboutdbs/papers/SRC-1997-018.pdf

Led to numerous commercial products: Relational S/W Inc. Oracle, SQL/DS, DB-2, SYBASE, Informix, MS SQLServer, etc. In use at CERN since early 1980s

Oracle Users Guide

V2.3

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ODBMS
Started ~late 1980s in research projects
 Altar p O2, Objectivity/DB, Ontos,

Target markets (Cattell): CAD, CASE, CAP, Scientific/Medical, AI, etc. Object-Oriented DB Manifesto:
 An OO DBMS must satisfy 2 criteria:
1. It should be a DBMS 2. It should be object-oriented

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ODBMS Speculation

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ODBMS Reality
Market much smaller than predicted Rationalisation
 but less than in RDBMS market
O2 presumably now belongs to IBM!

What happened?

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Market
Numerous dinosaur analogies
 After all, IBM invented RDBMS technology and only now(?) have a competitive RDBMS product

Can lightning strike twice / thrice? Predictions of ODBMS market: revised down in 1998 timeframe
 Original predictions (apparently) included ORDBMS component  In other words, $1-2B includes Oracle s share

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Technology
ODBMS initially worked with Smalltalk, C++, CO2,
 Mainstream?

Industry focus is now on Java, XML, The latter provided sufficient impetus for established vendors to enhance their products See, for example, VLDB papers:

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VLDB Papers
1989: complex objects / object modeling 1990: performance of OODBs 1999: XML; Extending SQL with user-defined data types
 O-O, What Have They Done to DB2?

2000: A Database Platform for Bioinformatics The need for complex data models has now moved mainstream The established vendors have seen it coming and have reacted

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Impact on ODBMS
Down-turn of ODBMS market blamed on RDBMS announcements
 e.g. Oracle 8.0, 8i,

Oracle 9i claims complete object support according to SQL-99 standard C++ binding provides ODMG-like interface for C++ programmers with both navigational & associative access

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From 1999 RD45 Status report

ODBMS / RDBMS / ORDBMS

Complex Data Performance, scalability Tight Language Binding
 OQL - SQL3 query subset

RDBMS + object extensions

 Can store ADTs  Methods on server

Growth similar to RDBMS in 80s ~$1B market by 2001~$100M?

Complex Data with Queries $8B in 1996 Likely to become dominant DBMS technology

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Risk Analysis: Summary of Options

Evaluate C++ binding to e.g. ORACLE Add ESCROW clause to Objectivity contract Pursue possibility of source license Visit key Objectivity customers Produce new requirements list Estimate manpower to support Objy in house Estimate manpower for clean-sheet solution Continue to monitor alternatives The LCB agrees with the other suggested steps to mitigate risk, with the addition of trying to insure that user code in reconstruction and analysis programs is kept as standards compliant as possible.

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Espresso
Preliminary results from the Espresso proof-of-concept prototype suggest that a home-grown ODBMS focussing on HEP needs could be built with a reasonable amount of manpower, perhaps some 15 person-years in total. However, it is far from clear where even such a modest amount of manpower could come from, particularly in a period when the overall CERN manpower is shrinking. A certain amount of manpower could possibly be found within the collaborations and at external institutes. However, a core team responsible for the main developments would most likely have a significant impact on the viability of such a project. In the immediate future, there is essentially no manpower available beyond that to complete the performance and scalability tests and write an architectural document. In the longer term, a home-grown ODBMS remains a possible fallback solution, although the time to develop a full product suggests that this will no longer be true much later than 2002.

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Oracle C++ Binding

Numerous C++ wrappers to Oracle s C interface exist With Oracle 9i, a C++ binding, modelled on JDBC, comes with the product Had this existed in 1995, history might well have been different

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Oracle 9i studies
Focus of this workshop
 Well, today & tomorrow

Discussed at last July s RD45 workshop

 As Oracle 8.2 the number changed but the features did not

During the Hoffmann Review of LHC Computing Activity kicked off after IT Eloise meeting

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Eloise Actions
The possibility of a joint project between Oracle and CERN should be explored to allow participation in the Oracle 9i F test with the goals of evaluating this product as a potential fallback solution and providing timely feedback on physics-style requirements. Nonstaff human resources should be identified such that there is no impact on current production services for Oracle and Objectivity.