It’s finally done!  Back in August of 2006 Joe Hellerstein asked me to join him and Mike Stonebraker in producing an article for Foundations and Trends in Database Systems.  The project ended up being bigger than I originally understood, and the review process always takes longer than any of us expect.  The goal for the paper is to document those aspects of commercial database management systems that aren’t well-covered in the literature.  We focused on those aspects of modern relational systems not broadly covered in the existing literature and let that criteria drive what material would be included.

The paper was published in Volume 1, Issue 2 of Foundations and Trends in Database Systems and is posted here:  Architecture of a Database System.

The abstract:

Database Management Systems (DBMSs) are a ubiquitous and critical component of modern computing, and the result of decades of research and development in both academia and industry. Historically, DBMSs were among the earliest multi-user server systems to be developed, and thus pioneered many systems design techniques for scalability and reliability now in use in many other contexts. While many of the algorithms and abstractions used by a DBMS are textbook material, there has been relatively sparse coverage in the literature of the systems design issues that make a DBMS work. This paper presents an architectural discussion of DBMS design principles, including process models, parallel architecture, storage system design, transaction system implementation, query processor and optimizer architectures, and typical shared components and utilities. Successful commercial and open-source systems are used as points of reference, particularly when multiple alternative designs have been adopted by different groups.

                                                                --jrh

James Hamilton, Windows Live Platform Services
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