SIADBDD: an integrated tool to design distributed databases

Nowadays, distributed database (DDB) systems are often better tailored to the structure and needs of organizations than their centralized counterparts. Among the main concerns and constraints when designing DDBs are effort and time consumption, which are limited and valuable resources. Due to the complexity of the problem, most of the proposed solutions divide the design process into two parts: the fragmentation and the allocation of the fragments to the different locations in the network. The quality of database distribution design, which involves fragmentation and allocation, should be assessed by the performance of a system. This paper addresses an architectural and functional overview of an implemented tool that aids designers to design DDBs in a relational context. Conceptual design and fragmentation issues are considered as well as the allocation problem. The tool applies metaheuristics for solving many design problems to obtain outputs in reasonable time. They use cost models and are targeted at globally minimizing these costs.status: publishe