Issues and approaches to design of real-time database systems
Mukesh Kumar Singhal · ACM SIGMOD Record · 1988
Real-time database systems support applications which have severe performance constraints such as fast response time and continued operation in the face of catastrophic failures. Real-time database systems are still in the state of infancy, and issues and alternatives in their design are not very well explored. In this paper, we discuss issues in the design of real-time database systems and discuss different alternatives for resolving these issues. We discuss the aspects in which requirements and design issues of real-time database systems differ from those of conventional database systems. We discuss two approaches to design real-time database systems, viz., main memory resident databases and design by trading a feature (like serializability). We also discuss requirements in the design of real-time distributed database systems, and specifically discuss issues in the design of concurrency control and crash recovery. It is felt that long communication delays may be a factor in limiting the performance of real-time distributed database systems. We present a concurrency control algorithm for real-time distributed database systems whose performance is not limited by communication delays.