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DISTRIBUTED DBMS: A WHITE PAPER by GEORGE SCHUSSEL
Source: white paper Published: Jun 1991
An in depth discussion of the technologies of and market for distributed database software by George Schussel. Some comments from the paper follow:
Most of the original research on distributed database technology for relational systems took place at IBM Corporation in IBM‘s two principal California software laboratories, Almaden and Santa Theresa. The first widely discussed distributed relational experiment was a project called R-Star, developed within IBM‘s laboratories. It is because of IBM‘s early use of the word STAR in describing this technology that most vendors’ distributed database systems names have incorporated “STAR” in one form or in another.
There are three broad segments to the market
1. True distributed DBMS
2. Distributed access (mote data access)
3. Client Server
Distributed access can properly be thought of as a subset of technologies that are being delivered by those vendors selling true distributed DBMS or client server DBMS technologies. The goal of distributed access is to provide gateways for access to data that is not local. The demand, of course, is greatest for the most popular mainframe file and database environments such as IMS, DB2, VSAM, and Rdb. Local DBMS capability is not a requirement for distributed access. Most vendors provide a piece of software known as a requestor to be run in the client side of the RDA environment. Some of the products in this market are not finished gateways but toolkits for users to build their own custom gateways.
