Saying Good-Bye to DBMSs, Designing Effective Interfaces
Michael Stonebraker discusses the problems with relational database management systems and possible solutions, and Jason Hong writes about interfaces and usable privacy and security.
Michael Stonebraker
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The End of a DBMS Era (Might Be Upon Us)
Relational database management systems (DBMSs) have been remarkably successful in capturing the DBMS marketplace. To a first approximation they are “the only game in town,” and the major vendors enjoy an overwhelming market share. They are selling “one size fits all”; i.e., a single relational engine appropriate for all DBMS needs. Moreover, the code line from all of the major vendors is quite elderly. Hence, the major vendors sell software that is a quarter century old, and has been extended and morphed to meet today’s needs. In my opinion, these legacy systems are at the end of their useful life.
The Claremont Report on Database Research
Database research is expanding, with major efforts in system architecture, new languages, cloud services, mobile and virtual worlds, and interplay between structure and text.
DBMSs For Science Applications: A Possible Solution
Quite a few scientists who deal with the processing and storage of large amounts of data are unhappy with relational DBMSs. Here are several reasons why—and a possible solution.
Technical Perspective: One Size Fits All: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone
Beginning in the early to mid-1980s the relational model of data has dominated the DBMS landscape. Moreover, descendents of the early relational prototypes have become the primary commercial relational DBMSs. As such, the basic architecture sold by the commercial vendors is more than two decades old.
Operating system support for database management
Several operating system services are examined with a view toward their applicability to support of database management functions. These services include buffer pool management; the file system; scheduling, process management, and interprocess communication; and consistency control.
The B-tree and its variants have, with increasing frequency, been proposed as a basic storage structure for multiuser database applications. Here, three potential problems which must be dealt with in such a structure that do not arise in more traditional static directory structures are indicated. One problem is a possible performance penalty.
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