Database Architectures

The deployment of efficient information systems has become a necessity for the success of any corporate or government operation. Critical system requirements that include maintenance of up-todate information, achievement of short transaction response times, utilization of networked computing resources, and handling of massive data volumes have resulted in the evolution of several specialized architectures for database management. Three families of such architectures that have been specifically developed to address the above requirements are: main-memory databases, client-server database and information systems, and parallel databases. By exploiting available system resources and workload characteristics, these architectures seek to optimize database processing for diverse application settings. In this chapter, we discuss the constraints as well as the implications that the various applications impose on system design, and describe key architectural features. We discuss issues..