Research Assistants: M. Annamalai, S. Goel, S. Li, S. Wang
Sponsors: Army Research Laboratory (Software Technology Branch), AT&T, NASA, UNISYS, PRF
The focus of our research is the investigation of the principles necessary to build high-performance, reliable, reconfigurable, and interoperable distributed database systems. We are conducting both theoretical and experimental studies in the areas of large scale distributed systems, support for object-oriented systems on top of relational implementation, mobile computing, legacy issues of database systems, adaptability to failures, replicated copy control, site failure/recovery, communication systems, and support for multimedia applications. We are studying the relationship between database and operating systems as well as exploring opportunities to employ parallelism at various levels. We have developed simulation tools for studying the performance bottlenecks for large scale distributed database systems. We are building an experimental facility to conduct studies in large scale distributed database systems that involve hundreds of sites distributed across the world.