Databases

team lib

A database system is made up of individual software components that interact with each other and with other system components, enabling applications access to various abstractions of physical data. Some of the external components include the functionality of file systems, storage cache, and resource manager functions. Other database system components work as an interrelated system of functions to process data requests on behalf of applications. The databases sole purpose is to provide consistent, efficient, and reliable data to end users.

I suppose its politically correct to substitute information for data here. However, end users today manipulate more data than the average application programmer did ten years ago. The point is, I dont think end users are intimidated any more regarding the handling, manipulation, and programmed access to computer data. The sophistication of computer usage among smart users, the available tools to extract, manipulate, and process data, have placed many users into the category of Super- User , Query Monster, or Departmental Programmer. The innovation and continued evolution of the database system has almost singularly provided the impetus for these changes. Fueled by the standard query language, SQL, and its derivatives, where programming has been taken to more accessible levels forall computer users to understand and manipulate on their own, the world has seen an explosion in database implementation, population, and usage.

Looking for Data

A major purpose of a database system is to provide many users with an abstract view of the data. Depending on who you are, you need different levels of abstraction when accessing existing data. IT professionals obviously require different types of access than end users who assume enterprise OLTP and batch applications will provide them with the right information (sorry, I mean data) at the right time. Underlying both IT professional and end-user activities, designing applications, data models, and required maintenance activities is a diversity of data access procedures. The various levels of access and abstraction are described here:

  • Physical Abstraction Used primarily by system database administrators (DBAs) and system administrators (storage administrators are slowly coming on board with these concepts), physical access is the lowest level of data abstraction. This allows complex low-level data types and structures to be described. It also provides a means to describe how the actual data is stored.

  • Conceptual Abstraction Used by programmers, application designers, and application DBAs, this is a level of abstraction up from the physical level that describes what user data is actually stored in the database. This also describes relationships that exist within and among the data elements. The conceptual level allows IT professionals to describe the entire database in terms of simple structures or data models. The physical level uses data models, structures, and descriptions to invoke complex physical structures to develop the database.

  • View Abstraction Driven by those who derive value from its usage (usually the end user), views are the primary level of abstraction for development of graphical user interfaces (GUIs). End users are not concerned about the entire set of information within the database, or the complexities of its internal structures. As such, view levels become the highest level of abstraction of the data and describe only one part of a database, simplifying the interaction of end users with the database. Depending on the levels of abstraction required, most users require multiple views of the data.

From a storage point of view, it is important to understand not only the physical abstractions of the data, but also the database components that interact with native operating system functions and storage drivers. This becomes increasingly important as database systems push the limits of storage infrastructures unlike any other system or application. However, it is also important to study the translations of abstractions to understand storage- related problems as System and Application DBAs, Administrators, and end users encounter them.

The following are the typical components of a database system:

  • Database Manager Functions that provide the interface between the physical data and the application programs, integrated application functions such as search and mathematical algorithms, and physical access to the data.

  • File Manager Functions that allocate space on storage systems and manage the data structures used to represent the conceptual abstraction of data. This component, in many cases, is integrated into the database manager, bypassing the operating systems file system for these functions.

  • Query Processor A component that translates statements from a query language, such as standard SQL, into low-level instructions that the database manager components will execute on behalf of the end-user query or application program.

  • Preprocessor Compiler A component that translates database language queries, such as SQL that are embedded in application programs. The compiler turns these into instructions for the query processor, which, in turn , processes it and passes it on to the database manager.

  • Data Language Compiler Functions that convert data language definitions into data structures called metadata . The Metadata table entries are then stored in a metadata database, sometimes called a data dictionary or repository.

Additional data structures are necessary as part of the physical implementation of the database system. These are the data dictionary or data repositories, as we just discussed. Finally, index structures provide enhanced search access to data when searching for particular values or data files.

Databases change as data is added and deleted. The collection of data in the database at any given time is called an instance, while the overall design of a database is called the database scheme or schema. The latter is expressed as a conceptual abstraction, and is specified through a data definition language. The results of a data definition schema are placed into a data dictionary or metadata table. A data manipulation language is a set of procedures to access and manipulate the data such as the standard query language or SQL.

Database Systems: Different Animals

There are only a few popular database models that have survived the mainframe-to-client/ server-to-Internet evolution. Interestingly, some of the older models continue to process workloads today, albeit mostly on mainframe processing complexes. Databases can be developed from a simple collection of sequential files, sometimes called flat files because of their non-dimensional access restrictions, to the most complex mainframe hierarchical databases. Regardless of implementation, major database management systems have evolved from three conceptual models.

These are the networked databases based on a network data model. Characterized by its capability to provide links within its fields of database records. The hierarchical data model is used by many file systems in their functions to provide faster access to directories and file indices. These are recognizable through their use of tree structures, such as the B-Tree and B+Tree data structures. The third and most popular model is the relational model, which forms the structure for all popular relational databases systems, such as Oracle, Sybase, IBMs DB2, Microsofts SQL/Server and others. The database model that provides the most challenges, problems, and headaches to storage infrastructures today is the same one that provides the most challenges, problems, and headaches to storage networking infrastructures: the relational database.

Relational database systems consist of a collection of tables, each of which has a unique name . Each field in the table is considered a distinct entity with attributesand has relationships to other entities within its own table as well as to others in the collection of tables that make up the database. User data is populated throughout the tables by individual records. This forms the basis for the tremendous power of a relational database, the ability to compare data elements to perform set mathematical functions, or What if questions. From an overall systems perspective, this provides two challenges:

  • First is the compute-intensive nature of relational processing. Because relational processing utilizes set mathematics to find the answer to a database query, the data necessary to construct the sets and processing to compute the answer is one of the most resource- intensive activities within data processing.

  • Second is the I/O-intensive nature of relational processing. I/O content and activity becomes intensive as the rows of data from tables are loaded into memory to build set constructs to compare data elements until all relational operations are complete. With a database of any size , the compute requirements coupled with the I/O requirements render relational database processing one of the most resource-intensive activities for commercial data processing.

Consequently, the relationship with storage for databases becomes very special. Although there are several considerations when maintaining a storage infrastructure for RDBMS, here are some particularly important points to consider as we move into the area of storage networking.

Relational databases have a legacy from UNIX and mainframe environments. This has resulted in a design whereby most relational database systems (RDBMS) contain their own I/O processing and file management functions. This means that when installed, they bypass the operating systems file system and utilize their own. This is referred to as an RDBMS that uses a raw disk partition. In effect, they are performing their own I/O and substituting their own file system, essentially mapping the raw disk to their own to enable low-level access. Historically, they had to do this to provide acceptable levels of performance and reliability in the days when UNIX did not have an optimized file system, much less a journaling file system. Given the resource-intensive nature of these relational operations, early RDBMS vendors developed their own I/O systems.

Another important factor to keep in mind is the nature of the relational data structure. It is a table, not a file, a table. The physical data is stored in native block formats for those RDBMSs that use their own I/O and file system, or for those whose physical data is masked from the system when using a standard file system. This means that without special utilities and knowledge of the database, its state, and its metadata, that the ability to reconstruct the data structure from a disruption is impossible . Therefore, databases are difficult, at best, to maintain from a data maintenance aspect (for instance, backup/recovery operations, archival, and volume management).

Databases, especially the relational model, are a challenge to maintain and manage. They have a close relationship with storage systems given their own processing characteristics and development legacy in the area of I/O technologies. Storage networking adds new dimensions to the existing challenges in data organization models and methods . We will explore the role of databases in the world of NAS and SAN in the upcoming sections.

 
team lib


Storage Networks
Storage Networks: The Complete Reference
ISBN: 0072224762
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 192

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net