Evolving NoSQL Databases Without Downtime

NoSQL databases like Redis, Cassandra, and MongoDB are increasingly popular because they are flexible, lightweight, and easy to work with. Applications that use these databases will evolve over time, sometimes necessitating (or preferring) a change to the format or organization of the data. The problem we address in this paper is: How can we support the evolution of high-availability applications and their NoSQL data online, without excessive delays or interruptions, even in the presence of backward-incompatible data format changes? We present KVolve, an extension to the popular Redis NoSQL database, as a solution to this problem. KVolve permits a developer to submit an upgrade specification that defines how to transform existing data to the newest version. This transformation is applied lazily as applications interact with the database, thus avoiding long pause times. We demonstrate that KVolve is expressive enough to support substantial practical updates, including format changes to RedisFS, a Redis-backed file system, while imposing essentially no overhead in general use and minimal pause times during updates.Comment: Update to writing/structur

A Review of integrity constraint maintenance and view updating techniques

Two interrelated problems may arise when updating a database. On one hand, when an update is applied to the database, integrity constraints may become violated. In such case, the integrity constraint maintenance approach tries to obtain additional updates to keep integrity constraints satisfied. On the other hand, when updates of derived or view facts are requested, a view updating mechanism must be applied to translate the update request into correct updates of the underlying base facts. This survey reviews the research performed on integrity constraint maintenance and view updating. It is proposed a general framework to classify and to compare methods that tackle integrity constraint maintenance and/or view updating. Then, we analyze some of these methods in more detail to identify their actual contribution and the main limitations they may present.Postprint (published version

Evolving information systems: meeting the ever-changing environment

To meet the demands of organizations and their ever-changing environment, information systems are required which are able to evolve to the same extent as organizations do. Such a system has to support changes in all time-and application-dependent aspects. In this paper, requirements and a conceptual framework for evolving information systems are presented. This framework includes an architecture for such systems and a revision of the traditional notion of update. Based on this evolutionary notion of update (recording, correction and forgetting) a state transition-oriented model on three levels of abstraction (event level, recording level, correction level) is introduced. Examples are provided to illustrate the conceptual framework for evolving information systems

From Causes for Database Queries to Repairs and Model-Based Diagnosis and Back

In this work we establish and investigate connections between causes for query answers in databases, database repairs wrt. denial constraints, and consistency-based diagnosis. The first two are relatively new research areas in databases, and the third one is an established subject in knowledge representation. We show how to obtain database repairs from causes, and the other way around. Causality problems are formulated as diagnosis problems, and the diagnoses provide causes and their responsibilities. The vast body of research on database repairs can be applied to the newer problems of computing actual causes for query answers and their responsibilities. These connections, which are interesting per se, allow us, after a transition -inspired by consistency-based diagnosis- to computational problems on hitting sets and vertex covers in hypergraphs, to obtain several new algorithmic and complexity results for database causality.Comment: To appear in Theory of Computing Systems. By invitation to special issue with extended papers from ICDT 2015 (paper arXiv:1412.4311

Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases

A federated database is comprised of multiple interconnected databases that cooperate in an autonomous fashion. Global integrity constraints are very useful in federated databases, but the lack of global queries, global transaction mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. The paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity constraint checking in federated databases: (1) the problem of constraint checking in a federated database environment is clearly formulated; (2) a family of cooperative protocols for constraint checking is presented; (3) the differences across protocols in the family are analyzed with respect to system requirements, properties guaranteed, and costs involved. Thus, we provide a suite of options with protocols for various environments with specific system capabilities and integrity requirement