Panel: Extensible database systems

• Authors: D. S. Batory;M. Mannino
• Venue: SIGMOD '86 Proceedings of the 1986 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data
• Year: 1986

New implementation techniques and new capabilities for database systems are being developed and proposed at a rapid rate. Novel file structures and improved algorithms for query optimization, buffer and recovery management, and transaction management have the potential of realizing significant gains in DBMS performance. The proposed integration of design objects, voice, text, rules, vector graphics, and images into databases promises exciting new capabilities for DBMSs. To accommodate advances in database technology and to support new classes of database applications, DBMSs must be extensible (i.e., customizable).To achieve extensibility forces a fundamental rethinking about how DBMSs are built, and how special-purpose features can be integrated into a DBMS with little effort and expense. Customizing DBMSs implies the availability of extensible data models, to allow for the introduction of new object types and operations, and extensible storage structures, to take advantage of special properties of stored data or operations to enhance performance.Although research on extensible DBMSs is still in its infancy, a fundamental concept underlying their construction is now evident. This is the standardization of interfaces and the plug-compatibility of modules. An extensible DBMS will be a 'software bus' whereby new modules (and hence new DBMS capabilities) can be added, exchanged, or removed by plugging or unplugging modules. Extensible DBMSs will thus rely on extensive software libraries, where new modules can be added as needed. Furthermore, changes to DBMSs can be made in months rather than years, and the reinvention of established technology is kept to a minimum because of the reusability of modules.The perception of DBMSs as monolithic entities that are difficult to modify will change as extensible DBMS technology becomes better understood. The use of database systems will not change, the ANSI/SPARC roles of database users, who write and execute transactions, and the database administrator (DBA), who designs and writes database schemas, will remain. Extensible DBMSs will require the introduction of an additional party, the database architecture administrator (DDA), who is responsible for the construction and customization of a DBMS.A growing number of researchers are developing extensible DBMSs. The purpose of this panel is to explain and discuss some of the approaches that are now being taken (and those that can be taken), and to survey the problems that confront extensible database technology. Descriptions of the systems and research represented at this panel are given in the following sections.