A TOOL FOR SUPPORTING THE TEACHING OF PARALLEL DATABASE SYSTEMS

Abstract – Parallel database systems are complex entities. As part of a course in a limited time scale, it is difficult to provide useful practical experience on these systems that provide deep insight into their behaviour and operation. This paper describes a tool for performance prediction which has been developed to aid the visualisation of parallel database systems and which is currently being used to support teaching. It enables students to experiment with different hardware and software configurations and to view the effects of changes on the performance of the system. It provides insight into how data can be placed among the nodes of a parallel machine according to predefined strategies, as well as manually, and provides feedback on the effect of these on throughput and response time. It is able to provide a good appreciation of the concepts in a relatively short period of time