An evaluation of Starburst's memory resident storage component

As part of the Starburst extensible database project, the authors have designed and implemented a memory resident storage component that can coexist along side traditional disk-oriented storage components. The memory resident storage component shares the code of Starburst's common services, such as query optimization, plan generation, query evaluation, record manipulation, and transaction management. The design of Starburst's memory resident storage component is discussed, contrasted with Starburst's default disk-oriented storage component, and compared to the performance of the two storage components using the Wisconsin Benchmarks. The results show that a memory resident storage component can perform significantly better than a disk-oriented storage component, even when the disk-oriented storage component has all of its data cached in memory. The benchmark results show that, by using memory resident techniques, overall query execution can be improved by up to a factor of four.<
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