DATABASE TECHNOLOGY

Keith G Jeffery
ERCIM-CLRC-RAL
kgj@rl.ac.uk

0. Overview

This paper covers the following topics:

What is Database Technology?
Why is it Important?
Which Application Areas?
What are the Relevant Technologies?
The ERCIM Competence
The Way Forward

1. What is Database Technology?

The essential feature of database technology is that it provides an INTERNAL Representation (model) of the EXTERNAL world of interest.  Examples are the representation of a particular date/time/flight/aircraft in airline reservation or of item code/item description/quantity on hand/reorder level/reorder quantity in a stock control system.

The TECHNOLOGY involved is concerned primarily with maintaining  the internal representation consistent with external reality; this involves the results of extensive R&D over the past 30 years in areas such as user requirements analysis, data modelling, process modelling, data integrity, concurrency, transactions, file organisation, indexing, rollback and recovery, persistent programming, object-orientation, logic programming, deductive database systems, active database systems... and in all these (and other) areas there remains much to be done.

2. Why is it Important?

Business in much of world depends on database technology.  For example:

Finance: the UK clearing banks have calculated that if their database systems were removed it would take every person in UK working 24 hours per day 7 days per week to process all the financial transactions manually. The London stock exchange relies on computer systems for recording buying and selling of stock which happens very quickly and in large quantities.  The amount of money involved in these transactions is enormous.

Transport: The airlines all use online seat reservation systems and have systems for scheduling aircraft, for building and maintaining timetables, for handling the in-flight catering and for mechanical servicing of the planes.  Similar systems exist for rail, sea and road transport.  They all use database technology extensively.

Utilities: the major utilities (water, electricity, gas) all have generation / distribution systems based on database technology.

Resources: The mineral exploration / extraction companies, and governments who regulate them (especially for oil exploration / extraction) have extensive databases which have complex data structures (usually including GIS (geographical information system) components.

Production engineering: from scheduling workflow through the production lines of machines to stock control and order processing, database technology underpins all activity in this area.

Environment: protection and control of the environment by government agencies depends heavily on database systems with GIS facilities, together with databases of toxic substances and clean-up recommendations.

Tourism: hotel systems and local tourist attractions information and booking facilities rely on database systems, and the major package tour operators have extensive databases for holiday planning and booking, together with financial systems for payment and invoicing.

Leisure: the entertainment industry uses database systems extensively for theatre, concert and cinema ticket bookings.

Culture: museums, art galleries, history exhibitions -all utilise database technology (and especially multimedia database technology) for cataloguing their collections and recording access to them.

Education: courses, materials, and assessment all rely heavily on database technology in all sectors of education.  Increasingly the linking of database technology with hypermedia delivery systems allows courseware to be maintained up-to-date and delivered to the consumer.

Healthcare: primary healthcare has long relied on database technology to schedule hospital beds or appointments at clinics.  The patient health record has been the subject of intensive study (and R&D resources) over many years because of its complexity of structure, content and media and also because of the security and privacy issues.  Epidemiology utilises database technology to hold and organise key information from many patients in order to allow statistical processing to detect trends and to alert medical practitioners to possible epidemics.  More recently, data mining techniques have been applied to this area - relying again on database technology.

Government administration would be paralysed without database technology; the collection of taxes and the payment of social security benefits depends totally on database technology.

Retail: the major retail stores utilise database technology in stock control and PoS (Point of Sale) systems.  Modern retailers use advanced data mining techniques to determine trends in sales and consumer preference to optimise stock control, retail performance, customer convenience and profit.

The essential point is that database technology is a CORE TECHNOLOGY with links to:
information management / processing
data analysis / statistics
data visualisation / presentation
multimedia and hypermedia
office and document systems
business processes, workflow, CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work)

But modern DB systems depend on an infrastructure of:
networks both LAN (local area network) and WAN (wide area  network)
client-server computing architecture
skilled data analysis and DB design
skilled systems development method(s)
for them to be effective and therefore used in any sector of activity.

3. Which Application Areas?

From the programme of the workshop there is clearly interest in:
culture&scientific information
tourism
telemedicine
natural resources management
production engineering
all of which have been mentioned above as typical DB application areas.  There is not enough time in the presentation to describe in any detail how DB technology is used in these application areas.

4. What Relevant Technologies?

Relational DBMS is the modern base technology for many business applications.  It offers flexibility and easy-to-use tools at the expense of ultimate performance.  More recently relational systems have started to extend their facilities in the directions of information retrieval, object-orientation and deductive/active systems leading to the so-called ‘Extended Relational Systems’.

Information Retrieval Systems started with handling library catalogues and extended to full free-text utilising inverted index technology with a lexicon or thesaurus.  Modern systems utilise some KBS (knowledge-based systems) techniques to improve retrieval.

Object-Oriented DBMS started for engineering applications where objects are complex, have versions and need to be treated as a complete entity.  OODBMSs share many of the OOPL features such as identity, inheritance, late binding, overloading and overriding.  OODBMSs have found favour in engineering and office systems but have not yet been successful in traditional application areas.

Deductive / Active DBMS have emerged over the last 20 years and combine logic programming technology with database technology.  This allows the database itself to react to external events an to maintain dynamically its integrity with respect to the real world.

5. The ERCIM Competence

Each Institute has a strong team in database technology, with its own national projects backed by participation in EU projects.  Each team has links to academics (through teaching / research) and links to commerce / industry (through projects and consultancy).

The groups in the ERCIM institutes formed EDRG, ERCIM Database Research Group, in 1991.  There have been 9 workshops to date, some joint projects and we obtained an EU-funded network of excellence (HCM programme).  EDRG can put together approximately 200 quality DB researchers plus contacts in academia and industry.

For further information on EDRG see: /activity/wg/EDRG/index.html

6. The Way Forward

It is hoped that this workshop will define the requirements for the way forward: perhaps the requirement is for workshops to exchange experience and to motivate the initiation of joint projects.  There is clearly a need to get to know teams and competencies on each side of the Mediterranean.  Hopefully joint projects can be initiated in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of DB technology for the region.