Dynamic Configuration Tuning of Working Database Management Systems

A database management system (DBMS) is a critical component in various systems. DBMSs record data related to our daily activities and analyze them to run services on the Internet. DBMSs have many configuration knobs that need to be set to appropriate values to achieve optimum performance. However, optimizing the tuning of knobs is difficult to achieve, even for experts. This paper describes a system that tunes the configuration of active DBMSs. The proposed system calculates the optimal values of the configuration knobs, tests them using the same SQL queries that the DBMS receives, and applies the optimal knob values to the DBMS. Thus the proposed system enables DBMSs to adapt to workload variation and perform efficiently.