Parallel & Distributed databases

Agenda
The problem domain of design parallel & distributed
databases (chp 18-20)
The data allocation problem
The data processing algorithms

Parallel & Distributed databases

Application

Application

Distributed control
Application

DBMS

DBMS

Hardware

Hardware

DBMS
Hardware

Distributed services

Parallel algorithms & data structures

Hardware

Hardware

Hardware

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
Lock manager process
Reduce lock-contention,
Spin-locks/ semaphores
Database writer process
Output modified buffer blocks to
disks continually

Data Servers
Data servers appear as a distributed DBMS that exchanges low-level
objects, e.g. pages
Ship data 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 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.
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 related items 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.
Locks on a prefetched item can be called back by the server, and
returned by client transaction if the prefetched item has not been
used.
Locks on the page can be deescalated to locks on items in the
page when there are lock conflicts. Locks on unused items can
then be returned to server.

Data Servers (Cont.)

Data Caching
Data can be cached at client 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.
Similar to deescalation, but across transactions.

Database Cache Servers

Two-stage SQL server, e.g. TimesTen

The front-stage provides an in-memory SQL database service, which

acts as a write-thru cache to a backend DBMS

Issues:
SQL cache coherency
Transaction management
Optimization over materialized results

Parallel Systems
Parallel database 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

Parallel Database Architectures

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.
.

Speed-Up and Scale-Up

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.

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.

Distributed Systems

Data spread 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

Sharing data 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

Where to leave the data?

Where to process transactions and queries?

Distributed Data Storage

Assume relational data model

Replication
System maintains multiple copies of data, stored in different sites,
for faster retrieval and fault tolerance.
A relation or fragment of a relation is replicated if it is stored
redundantly in two or more sites.
Full replication of a relation is the case where the relation is stored at
all sites.
Fully redundant databases are those in which every site contains a
copy of the entire database.

Data Replication (Cont.)

Advantages of Replication
Availability: failure of site containing relation r does not result in
unavailability of r if replicas exist.
Parallelism: queries on r may be processed by several nodes in parallel.
Reduced data transfer: relation r is available locally at each site
containing a replica of r.

Disadvantages of Replication
Increased cost of updates: each replica of relation r must be updated.
Increased complexity of concurrency control: concurrent updates to
distinct replicas may lead to inconsistent data unless special
concurrency control mechanisms are implemented.
One solution: choose one copy as primary copy and apply
concurrency control operations on primary copy

Distributed Data Storage

Assume relational data model

Replication
System maintains multiple copies of data, stored in different sites,
for faster retrieval and fault tolerance.

Fragmentation
Relation is partitioned into several fragments stored in distinct sites

Replication and fragmentation can be combined

Relation is partitioned into several fragments: system maintains
several identical replicas of each such fragment.

Implementation issues

Where to leave the data?

Where to process transactions and queries?

 Where to leave the data ?

Parallel systems
Scalable Distributed Data Structures
Dynamic Hash Table (P2P)

Introduction

Parallel machines are quite common and affordable

Databases are growing increasingly large

large volumes of transaction data are collected and stored for later
analysis.
multimedia objects like images are increasingly stored in databases

Large-scale parallel database systems increasingly used for:

storing large volumes of data
processing time-consuming decision-support queries
providing high throughput for transaction processing

Parallelism in Databases

Data can be partitioned across multiple disks for parallel I/O.

Individual relational operations (e.g., sort, join, aggregation) can be
executed in parallel
data can be partitioned and each processor can work independently
on its own partition.

Queries are expressed in high level language (SQL, translated to

relational algebra)
makes parallelization easier.

Different queries can be run in parallel with each other.

Concurrency control takes care of conflicts.
Thus, databases naturally lend themselves to parallelism.

I/O Parallelism

Reduce the time required to retrieve relations from disk by partitioning the
relations on multiple disks.

Horizontal partitioning tuples of a relation are divided among many disks

such that each tuple resides on one disk.

Partitioning techniques (number of disks = n):

Round-robin:
Send the ith tuple inserted in the relation to disk i mod n.
Hash partitioning:
Choose one or more attributes as the partitioning attributes.
Choose hash function h with range 0n - 1
Let i denote result of hash function h applied to
the partitioning
attribute value of a tuple. Send tuple to disk i.

I/O Parallelism (Cont.)

Partitioning techniques (cont.):

Range partitioning:
Choose an attribute as the partitioning attribute.
A partitioning vector [vo, v1, ..., vn-2] is chosen.
Let v be the partitioning attribute value of a tuple. Tuples such that
vi vi+1 go to disk I + 1. Tuples with v < v0 go to disk 0 and tuples
with v vn-2 go to disk n-1.
E.g., with a partitioning vector [5,11], a tuple with partitioning
attribute value of 2 will go to disk 0, a tuple with value 8 will go to
disk 1, while a tuple with value 20 will go to disk2.

Comparison of Partitioning Techniques

Evaluate how well partitioning techniques support the following types

of data access:
1.Scanning the entire relation.
2.Locating a tuple associatively point queries.
E.g., r.A = 25.
3.Locating all tuples such that the value of a given attribute lies within
a specified range range queries.
E.g., 10 r.A < 25.

Comparison of Partitioning Techniques (Cont.)

Round robin:
Advantages
Best suited for sequential scan of entire relation on each query.
All disks have almost an equal number of tuples; retrieval work is
thus well balanced between disks.

Range queries are difficult to process

No clustering -- tuples are scattered across all disks

Comparison of Partitioning Techniques(Cont.)

Hash partitioning:
Good for sequential access
Assuming hash function is good, and partitioning attributes form a
key, tuples will be equally distributed between disks
Retrieval work is then well balanced between disks.
Good for point queries on partitioning attribute
Can lookup single disk, leaving others available for answering
other queries.
Index on partitioning attribute can be local to disk, making lookup
and update more efficient
No clustering, so difficult to answer range queries

Comparison of Partitioning Techniques (Cont.)

Range partitioning:
Provides data clustering by partitioning attribute value.
Good for sequential access
Good for point queries on partitioning attribute: only one disk needs to
be accessed.
For range queries on partitioning attribute, one to a few disks may need
to be accessed
Remaining disks are available for other queries.
Good if result tuples are from one to a few blocks.
If many blocks are to be fetched, they are still fetched from one to a
few disks, and potential parallelism in disk access is wasted
Example of execution skew.

Partitioning a Relation across Disks

If a relation contains only a few tuples which will fit into a single disk
block, then assign the relation to a single disk.

Large relations are preferably partitioned across all the available disks.

If a relation consists of m disk blocks and there are n disks available in

the system, then the relation should be allocated min(m,n) disks.

Handling of Skew

The distribution of tuples to disks may be skewed that is, some

disks have many tuples, while others may have fewer tuples.
Types of skew:
Attribute-value skew.
Some values appear in the partitioning attributes of many
tuples; all the tuples with the same value for the partitioning
attribute end up in the same partition.
Can occur with range-partitioning and hash-partitioning.
Partition skew.
With range-partitioning, badly chosen partition vector may
assign too many tuples to some partitions and too few to others.
Less likely with hash-partitioning if a good hash-function is
chosen.

Handling Skew in Range-Partitioning

To create a balanced partitioning vector (assuming partitioning attribute

forms a key of the relation):
Sort the relation on the partitioning attribute.
Construct the partition vector by scanning the relation in sorted order
as follows.
After every 1/nth of the relation has been read, the value of the
partitioning attribute of the next tuple is added to the partition
vector.
n denotes the number of partitions to be constructed.
Duplicate entries or imbalances can result if duplicates are present in
partitioning attributes.

Alternative technique based on histograms used in practice

Handling Skew using Histograms

Balanced partitioning vector can be constructed from histogram in a

relatively straightforward fashion

Assume uniform distribution within each range of the histogram

Histogram can be constructed by scanning relation, or sampling

(blocks containing) tuples of the relation

Handling Skew Using Virtual Processor Partitioning

Skew in range partitioning can be handled elegantly using virtual

processor partitioning:
create a large number of partitions (say 10 to 20 times the number
of processors)
Assign virtual processors to partitions either in round-robin
fashion or based on estimated cost of processing each virtual
partition

Basic idea:
If any normal partition would have been skewed, it is very likely
the skew is spread over a number of virtual partitions
Skewed virtual partitions get spread across a number of
processors, so work gets distributed evenly!