Research Assistant: S. Goel
Sponsor: PRF
Emerging "next generation" applications such as multimedia and engineering (CAD/CAE) require managing databases that are more complex than those in applications such as banks and airline reservation systems. In O-Raid we are exploring the object-oriented approach as a means for overcoming limitations of current database management systems. These limitations typically include a lack of support for complex data structures and operations, integrity checking, and triggers.
O-Raid integrates the relational and object models. It extends the distributed relational system Raid. We have investigated selective replication of object components to tune replication granularity to meet both the availability and performance requirements of distributed applications, and at the same time minimize storage costs. We have proposed federated objects as a pragmatic approach to data integration.
We are currently working on clustering (grouping) of component objects in a complex object at the server in the client/server based object-oriented database systems. We are investigating a client-driven grouping approach. A client requires run-time and statically analyzed information for the method to make its decisions. We introduce a navigation structure called complex object skeleton to aid the user in making group object requests. We have evaluated the overheads incurred in maintaining and accessing these complex object skeletons. We have found that the performance of methods using our client-driven object approach improves by 34% compared to the traditional object-on-demand access approach. TP-1 benchmark was used in this study.