Database System

Architectures
Dr. M. Brindha
Assistant Professor
Department of CSE
NIT, Trichy-15
 Centralized Systems

• Run on a single computer system and do not interact with other

computer systems.
• General-purpose
computer system: one to a few CPUs and a
number of device controllers that are connected through a
common bus that provides access to shared memory.
• Single-usersystem (e.g., personal computer or workstation):
desk-top unit, single user, usually has only one CPU and one or
two hard disks; the OS may support only one user.
• Multi-user
system: more disks, more memory, multiple CPUs,
and a multi-user OS. Serve a large number of users who are
connected to the system vie terminals. Often called server
systems.
A Centralized Computer System
 Client-Server Systems
• Serversystems satisfy requests generated at m client systems, whose
general structure is shown below:
 Client-Server Systems (Cont.)
• Database functionality can be divided into:
• Back-end: manages access structures, query evaluation and
optimization, concurrency control and recovery.
• Front-end: consists of tools such as forms, report-writers, and
graphical user interface facilities.
• The interface between the front-end and the back-end is through SQL
or through an application program interface.
 Client-Server Systems (Cont.)
• Advantages of replacing mainframes with networks of workstations
or personal computers connected to back-end server machines:
•better functionality for the cost
•flexibility in locating resources and expanding
facilities
•better user interfaces
•easier maintenance
• Server systems can be broadly categorized into two kinds:
•transaction servers which are widely used in
relational database systems, and
•data servers, used in object-oriented database
systems

•b
Transaction Servers
• Also
called query server systems or SQL server systems; clients
send requests to the server system where the transactions are
executed, and results are shipped back to the client.
• Requests specified in SQL, and communicated to the server
through a remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism.
• Transactional RPC allows many RPC calls to collectively form a
transaction.
• Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a C language application
program interface standard from Microsoft for connecting to a
server, sending SQL requests, and receiving results.
• JDBC standard similar to ODBC, for Java
Transaction Server Process Structure
• A typical transaction server consists of multiple
processes accessing data in shared memory.
• Server processes
• These receive user queries (transactions), execute them and
send results back
• Processes may be multithreaded, allowing a single process to
execute several user queries concurrently
• Typically multiple multithreaded server processes

• Lock manager process

• Database writer process

• Output modified buffer blocks to disks continually
Transaction Server Processes (Cont.)
• Log writer process
• Server processes simply add log records to log record buffer
• Log writer process outputs log records to stable storage.

• Checkpoint process
• Performs periodic checkpoints

• Process monitor process

• Monitors other processes, and takes recovery actions if any of the
other processes fail
• E.g. aborting any transactions being executed by a server process and
restarting it
Transaction System Processes (Cont.)
Transaction System Processes (Cont.)

• Shared memory contains shared data

• Buffer pool
• Lock table
• Log buffer
• Cached query plans (reused if same query submitted again)

• All database processes can access shared memory

• To ensure that no two processes are accessing the
same data structure at the same time, databases
systems implement mutual exclusion using either
• Operating system semaphores
• Atomic instructions such as test-and-set
 Transaction System Processes (Cont.)
• To avoid overhead of interprocess communication for lock request/grant, each
database process operates directly on the lock table data structure instead of
sending requests to lock manager process
• Mutual exclusion ensured on the lock table using semaphores, or more
commonly, atomic instructions
• If a lock can be obtained, the lock table is updated directly in shared memory
• If a lock cannot be immediately obtained, a lock request is noted in the lock
table and the process (or thread) then waits for lock to be granted
• When a lock is released, releasing process updates lock table to record release
of lock, as well as grant of lock to waiting requests (if any)
• Process/thread waiting for lock may either:
• Continually scan lock table to check for lock grant, or
• Use operating system semaphore mechanism to wait on a semaphore.
• Semaphore identifier is recorded in the lock table
• When a lock is granted, the releasing process signals the
semaphore to tell the waiting process/thread to proceed
• Lock manager process still used for deadlock detection
 Data Servers
• Used in LANs, where there is a very high speed connection
between the clients and the server, the client machines are
comparable in processing power to the server machine, and the
tasks to be executed are compute intensive.
• Shipdata to client machines where processing is performed, and
then ship results back to the server machine.
• This architecture requires full back-end functionality at the clients.

• Used in many object-oriented database systems

• Issues:
•Page-Shipping versus Item-Shipping
•Locking
•Data Caching
•Lock Caching
 Data Servers (Cont.)
• Page-Shipping versus Item-Shipping
• Smaller unit of shipping  more messages
• Worth prefetching relateditems along with requested item
• Page shipping can be thought of as a form of prefetching

• Locking
• Overhead of requesting and getting locks from server is
high due to message delays
• Can grant locks on requested and prefetched items; with
page shipping, transaction is granted lock on whole page.
 Data Servers (Cont.)
• Data Caching
• Data can be cached atclient even in between transactions
• But check that data is up-to-date before it is used (cache
coherency)
• Check can be done when requesting lock on data item

• Lock Caching
• Locks can be retained by client system even in between
transactions
• Transactions can acquire cached locks locally, without
contacting server
• Server calls back locks from clients when it receives
conflicting lock request. Client returns lock once no local
transaction is using it.
Database System Architecture

• Server database systems

• Parallel database systems

• Distributed database systems

 Parallel Systems

• Paralleldatabase systems consist of multiple processors and

multiple disks connected by a fast interconnection network.
•A coarse-grain parallel machine consists of a small number of
powerful processors
•A massively parallel or fine grain parallel machine utilizes
thousands of smaller processors.
• Two main performance measures:
• throughput --- the number of tasks that can be
completed in a given time interval
• response time --- the amount of time it takes to
complete a single task from the time it is submitted
 Speed-Up and Scale-Up
• Speedup: a fixed-sized problem executing on a small system
is given to a system which is N-times larger.
• Measured by:
speedup = small system elapsed time
large system elapsed time
• Speedup is linear if equation equals N.
• Scaleup: increase the size of both the problem and the
system
• N-times larger system used to perform N-times larger job
• Measured by:
scaleup = small system small problem elapsed time
big system big problem elapsed time
• Scale up is linear if equation equals 1.
Speedup

Speedup
Scaleup

Scaleup
•
Batch and
Batch scaleup:
Transaction Scaleup
•A single large job; typical of most database
queries and scientific simulation.
•Use an N-times larger computer on N-times larger
problem.
• Transaction scaleup:
•Numerous small queries submitted by
independent users to a shared database; typical
transaction processing and timesharing systems.
•N-times as many users submitting requests
(hence, N-times as many requests) to an N-times
larger database, on an N-times larger computer.
•Well-suited to parallel execution.
Factors Limiting Speedup and
Scaleup
Speedup and scaleup are often sublinear due to:
• Startup
costs: Cost of starting up multiple processes may
dominate computation time, if the degree of parallelism is high.
• Interference:Processes accessing shared resources (e.g.,system
bus, disks, or locks) compete with each other, thus spending
time waiting on other processes, rather than performing useful
work.
• Skew: Increasing the degree of parallelism increases the
variance in service times of parallely executing tasks. Overall
execution time determined by slowest of parallely executing
tasks.
Interconnection Network Architectures
• Bus.System components send data on and receive data
from a single communication bus;
• Does not scale well with increasing parallelism.

• Mesh. Components are arranged as nodes in a grid, and

each component is connected to all adjacent components
• Communication links grow with growing number of
components, and so scales better.
• But may require 2n hops to send message to a node (or
n with wraparound connections at edge of grid).
• Hypercube. Components are numbered in binary;
components are connected to one another if their binary
representations differ in exactly one bit.
• n components are connected to log(n) other components
and can reach each other via at most log(n) links; reduces
communication delays.
Interconnection Architectures
Parallel Database Architectures
• Shared memory -- processors share a common memory

• Shared disk -- processors share a common disk

• Shared nothing -- processors share neither a common memory

nor common disk
• Hierarchical -- hybrid of the above architectures
Parallel Database Architectures
Shared Memory
• Processors and disks have access to a common memory,
typically via a bus or through an interconnection network.
• Extremely efficient communication between processors — data
in shared memory can be accessed by any processor without
having to move it using software.
• Downside – architecture is not scalable beyond 32 or 64
processors since the bus or the interconnection network
becomes a bottleneck
• Widely used for lower degrees of parallelism (4 to 8).
 Shared Disk
• All processors can directly access all disks via an
interconnection network, but the processors have private
memories.
• The memory bus is not a bottleneck
• Architecture provides a degree of fault-tolerance — if a
processor fails, the other processors can take over its tasks
since the database is resident on disks that are accessible
from all processors.
• Downside: bottleneck now occurs at interconnection to the
disk subsystem.
• Shared-disk
systems can scale to a somewhat larger number
of processors, but communication between processors is
slower.
Shared Nothing
• Node consists of a processor, memory, and one or more disks.
Processors at one node communicate with another processor at
another node using an interconnection network. A node
functions as the server for the data on the disk or disks the node
owns.
• Examples: Teradata, Tandem, Oracle-n CUBE

• Data accessed from local disks (and local memory accesses) do

not pass through interconnection network, thereby minimizing
the interference of resource sharing.
• Shared-nothing multiprocessors can be scaled up to thousands
of processors without interference.
• Main drawback: cost of communication and non-local disk
access; sending data involves software interaction at both ends.
 Hierarchical
• Combines characteristics of shared-memory, shared-disk, and
shared-nothing architectures.
• Toplevel is a shared-nothing architecture – nodes connected
by an interconnection network, and do not share disks or
memory with each other.
• Eachnode of the system could be a shared-memory system
with a few processors.
• Alternatively,
each node could be a shared-disk system, and
each of the systems sharing a set of disks could be a shared-
memory system.
• Reduce the complexity of programming such systems by
distributed virtual-memory architectures
• Also called non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA)
 Distributed Systems
• Dataspread over multiple machines (also referred to as sites or
nodes.
• Network interconnects the machines
• Data shared by users on multiple machines
Distributed Databases
• Homogeneous distributed databases
• Same software/schema on all sites, data may be partitioned
among sites
• Goal: provide a view of a single database, hiding details of
distribution
• Heterogeneous distributed databases
• Different software/schema on different sites
• Goal: integrate existing databases to provide useful
functionality
• Differentiate between local and global transactions
• A local transaction accesses data in the single site at which the
transaction was initiated.
• A global transaction either accesses data in a site different
from the one at which the transaction was initiated or accesses
data in several different sites.
Trade-offs in Distributed Systems
• Sharingdata – users at one site able to access the data residing
at some other sites.
• Autonomy – each site is able to retain a degree of control over
data stored locally.
• Higher system availability through redundancy — data can be
replicated at remote sites, and system can function even if a site
fails.
• Disadvantage: added complexity required to ensure proper
coordination among sites.
• Software development cost.
• Greater potential for bugs.
• Increased processing overhead.
 Implementation Issues for Distributed Databases
• Atomicity needed even for transactions that update data at
multiple site
• Transaction cannot be committed at one site and aborted at another

• The two-phase commit protocol (2PC) used to ensure atomicity

• Basic idea: each site executes transaction till just before commit, and the
leaves final decision to a coordinator
• Each site must follow decision of coordinator: even if there is a failure while
waiting for coordinators decision
• To do so, updates of transaction are logged to stable storage and transaction is
recorded as “waiting”
• More details in Sectin 19.4.1

• 2PC is not always appropriate: other transaction models based

on persistent messaging, and workflows, are also used
• Distributed concurrency control (and deadlock detection)
required. Replication of data items required for improving data
availability
Interconnection Networks
Local-Area Network
Thank You!!!