Pre-Milestone Handout ECS 165A

Pre-Milestone Handout
ECS 165A
For the pre-milestone assignment, you are going to research and explore modern
database technologies, to learn more about their overall architecture, key components,
and their strengths and limitations. This is the only individual assignment, in which you
need to write a short summary, at least five pages long, summarizing your findings.
This handout offers a few suggested technologies to get you started. You are not
limited to any of the technologies listed here. You have complete freedom.
Think Long-term, Plan Carefully.
Be curious, Be creative!
One way to start your exploration is through Google to learn about databases in general.
Essentially, you need to research what it takes to build a database. What are the key
components that are necessary? Along the way, document all your findings and keep
track of the sources of all materials. Materials below are merely suggestions to get you
to start thinking about your journey.
There are two prominent modes of a database that one may employ. You can use an
embedded database, essentially shipping your database as part of the application
package or an externally hosted database, in which a database is hosted on the external
server and your application connects to it. Broadly speaking there are several flavors of
databases, namely, SQL (a relational database with the transactional capability), NoSQL
database (key-value store with the limited transactional capability), NewSQL databases
(e.g., Google Spanner), HTAP databases (similar to L-Store, which is the focus of the
course project), or Non-Relational databases (supporting data models such as a graph,
JSON, XML, document, may also be categorized under NoSQL brand).
Ranking: You may find a ranking of the most widely used database systems here. An
interesting read on the most popular database engines for mobile apps.
Benchmarks: TPC is the gold industry standard to benchmark and evaluate major
database technologies, for example, the two most well-known benchmarks are TPC-C
and TPC-H.
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Instructor: Mohammad Sadoghi Due Date: January 18, 2022
TAs: Sajjad Rahnama Submission Method: Canvas
Shesha Vishnu Prasad Score: 10%
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Here are just a few starting examples.
ResilientDB is an academic permissioned blockchain fabric at UC Davis, which is
designed with the aim of fostering academic and industrial research. It offers a
high-throughput yielding distributed ledger built upon scale-centric design principles to
democratize and decentralized computation. The key aim behind the development of
ResilientDB is to illustrate that the design and architecture of the underlying system are
as important as optimizing BFT consensus protocols. ResilientDB raises a simple yet
intriguing question: can a well-crafted system-centric architecture based on a classical
BFT protocol outperform a protocol-centric architecture? Therefore, we strongly
encourage everyone to explore and fork the ResilienDB codebase, and more
importantly, we invite everyone to contribute to the ResilienDB open-source project.
SQLite is a software library (an embedded database) that provides a relational database
management system. The lite in SQLite means lightweight in terms of setup, database
administration, and required resources. Note SQL is the standard language to
communicate with relational databases (which you will learn in the class). [Tutorial,
Architecture]
MySQL is the world's most popular open-source database. Whether you are a
fast-growing web property, technology ISV, or large enterprise, MySQL can
cost-effectively help you deliver high-performance, scalable database applications.
[Documentation, Architecture]
Firebase is a platform (an externally hosted, cloud service) that allows building web and
mobile apps. You can store users’ data on its real-time database which syncs data
among users' data in no time. It is owned by Google and is easy to integrate into your
project. [Firebase-console, Intro Video]
PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source object-relational database system with over 30
years of active development that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, feature
robustness, and performance [Documentation, Architecture].
Minibase is a database management system intended for educational use. It has a
parser, optimizer, buffer pool manager, storage mechanisms (heap files, secondary
indexes based on B+ Trees), and a disk space management system. The goal is not just
to have a functional DBMS, but to have a DBMS where the individual components can be
studied and implemented by students.
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Instructor: Mohammad Sadoghi Due Date: January 18, 2022
TAs: Sajjad Rahnama Submission Method: Canvas
Shesha Vishnu Prasad Score: 10%
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Forming Team and Finalizing Roles
As part of this milestone, you need to form your group, including the name of all
members, and fill-up the form here. If you are looking for a team please use this form.
Additionally, in your report, you need to specify the role of each member. For each group,
it is important that each member lead one aspect of the project while contributing and
learning about other parts. There are several leadership roles as we go through various
stages of the project such as (1) team coordinator, (2) system architect, (3) developers,
and (4) tester. The design and development itself may further be categorized as (1)
query evaluation (APIs and access methods); (2) bufferpool management; (3) crash,
recovery, and logging; and (4) synchronization and concurrency. Please consider and
specify the role of each member, which may change as we make progress throughout
the course.