ABSTRACT

With non-traditional application areas such as engineer-ing design, image/voice data management, scientific/statistical applications, and artificial intelligence systems all clamoring for ways to store and efficiently process larger and larger volumes of data, it is clear that traditional database technology has been pushed to its limits. It also seems clear that no single database system will be capable of simultaneously meeting the functionality and performance requirements of such a diverse set of applications. In this paper we describe the preliminary design of EXODUS, an extensible database system that will facilitate the fast development of high-performance, application-specific database systems. EXODUS provides certain kernel facilities, including a versatile storage manager and a type manager. In addition, it provides an architectural framework for building application-specific database systems, tools to partially automate the generation of such systems, and libraries of software components (e.g., access methods) that are likely to be useful for many application domains. 1