M.S. Thesis Defense - Valliappan Narayanan

Date: 02 Jun, 2009
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: 223 Atanasoff Hall
Topic: A Workbench for Advanced database Implementation and Benchmarking
Major Professor(s): Shashi K. Gadia


Abstract:

This work focuses on bringing many of our database artifacts and prototypes to reside on the top of a common workbench platform which brings uniformity across different subsystems in the way they are used and developed in instruction as well as research projects. Our prototypes can share a common storage platform and buffer management. Existing GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) have been merged into a common, but simple GUI. The GUI basically executes selected or a batch of commands. A versatile command format has been developed to allow commands belonging to different subsystems to be interleaved in the same batch unambiguously. GUI facilitate use of variable to make commands more versatile. Commands can be nester in for-loops for execution with different values assigned to variables. Subsystem currently included are: a runner for SQL on a variety of database platforms, a runner for Quilt queries (Quilt is an early version of XQuery and runs on a platform called KWEELT), ElementalDB, an experimental database system used for instruction in a graduate database implementation course, our own XQuery engine which aims at handling data in terabyte range stored in our storage in paginated form using our pagination algorithm, a research prototype for NC94, an important spatiotemporal data set in agriculture, and a research prototype for a temporal database. The organization of the subsystems follows strict convention for ease of further development and maintenance. XML is used extensively by various subsystems. An XML based framework has been developed for benchmarking subsystems to make experiments completely repeatable at click of a button starting from creation of storage, loading of data sets, execution of commands, collecting performance data in XML-based logs to reporting using XQuery queries on the XML logs.