Use of inherent parallelism in database operations

Abstract

Non-standard applications of database systems (e.g. CAD) are characterized by complex objects and powerful user operations. Units of work decomposed from a single user operation are said to allow for inherent semantic parallelism when they do not conflict with each other at the level of decomposition. Hence, they can be scheduled concurrently. In order to support this processing scheme it is necessary to organize parallel execution by adequate control units. Therefore, client-server processes and nested transactions are applied to hierarchically structure the DBS-operations. On the other hand, the DBS-code itself has to be mapped onto a multiprocessor system to take advantage of multiple processing units.