Michael Stonebraker
Jeff Anton
Abstract
This paper suggests that more powerful database systems (DBMS) can be built by supporting database procedures as full-fledged database objects. In particular, allowing fields of a database to be a collection of queries in the query language of the system is shown to allow the natural expression of complex data relationships. Moreover, many of the features present in object-oriented systems and semantic data models can be supported by this facility.
In order to implement this construct, extensions to a typical relational query language must be made, and considerable work on the execution engine of the underlying DBMS must be accomplished. This paper reports on the extensions for one particular query language and data manager and then gives performance figures for a prototype implementation. Even though the performance of the prototype is competitive with that of a conventional system, suggestions for improvement are presented.
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Index Terms
- Extending a database system with procedures
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Reviews
Robert J. Tufts
In the last few years, a number of authors have pointed out weaknesses of and needed extensions to the relational database model. In this paper, the authors identify many of these and suggest the use of stored procedures within a database field to be a powerful, general purpose solution. In particular, they propose extending the relational model to allow particular fields in the database to contain query language (SQL or QUEL) commands that are executed at run time. The advantage of this proposed extension is that one mechanism can solve a large number of perceived problems and has the potential of even more general applications in the future. Using stored procedures, complex objects such as maps and graphs can be stored in a relational database. Likewise, bi-directional relationships, browsing of icons, sharing of subobjects, referential integrity (relational editing), and semantic data modeling (generalization and aggregation) can all be easily supported. The purpose of the paper is to propose an extension that still retains the “Spartan simplicity” of the relational model while solving many of its inadequacies. The use of stored procedures fulfills this purpose. Stored procedures follow CODASYL DBTG suggestions from 1971 [1] and should work, but at the possible expense of additional relational model response time and security problems. In an effort to evaluate these impacts, test runs were made comparing INGRES against INGRES+, which included the proposed extensions. The results were as expected—full or partial joins were much slower while joins resulting in only a few tuples were faster. As the authors stated it, the INGRES+ results were “competitive.” The paper's strength lies in its well-thought-out implementation of stored queries, while its weakness is that it lacks a discussion of security. Stored queries could conceivably allow a user with limited database access to get to unauthorized parts of the database. The paper is well written, has a good organization, and includes a good set of references. The wording is such that even neophytes to relational technology will be able to understand the discussion. I would strongly recommend this excellent paper to both researchers and DBMS vendors alike. The use of stored queries will probably be a commercially available relational model extension in the near future (Relational Technology, Inc. was holding discussions on its implementation over a year ago).
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