Parallel Database Systems

Abstract

Many data-intensive applications require support for very large databases (e.g., hundreds of terabytes or petabytes). Examples of such applications are e-commerce, data warehousing, and data mining. Very large databases are typically accessed through high numbers of concurrent transactions (e.g., performing on-line orders on an electronic store) or complex queries (e.g., decision-support queries). The first kind of access is representative of On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications while the second is representative of On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) applications. Supporting very large databases efficiently for either OLTP or OLAP can be addressed by combining parallel computing and distributed database management.