An environment for prototyping real-time distributed databases

A prototyping environment for investigating distributed real-time database systems is described. The prototyping environment is based on a concurrent programming kernel which supports the creation, blocking, and termination of processes, as well as scheduling and inter-process communication. Although the complexity of a distributed database system makes prototyping difficult, the implementation has proven satisfactory for experimentation on design choices, different database control techniques, and even an integrated evaluation of database systems. It supports a very flexible used interface, allowing a wide range of system configurations and workload characteristics. Since the prototyping environment is designed to provide a spectrum of database functions and operating system modules, it facilitates the construction of multiple system instances with different characteristics without much overhead. The expressive power and performance evaluation capability of the prototyping environment has been demonstrated by implementing real-time database systems and investigating the performance characteristics of priority-ceiling protocol and multiversion databases.<>