Real-time Databases

Presented by

Parimala kyathsandra
CSE 666 fall 2006

Instructor

Prof. Subra ganesan

 Introduction
 A database is a structured and convenient
way to manage and sharing of large
quantities of data among multiple tasks
 Real time databases occur in many real time
applications
 In soft real time systems : banking, stock market, and
airline reservation systems
 In hard real time systems: early warning systems,

Emergency alarm systems

 Basic Definitions
 A transaction is a sequence of read and
write operations

 In database terms ,
 Query –consists of only read operations
 Update- consists of write/other operations
 ACID Properties
 Atomicity: a transaction is done either
completely or not at all
 Consistency: transactions are executed in a
given sequence
 Isolation: the actions of a transaction are not
visible to any other transactions until it is
committed
 Durability: the actions of a database are
permanent
 Real-time Vs General Purpose
Databases
 Real time database includes
- The ACID properties
- Timing issues
 Queries to the database
-Have soft or hard deadlines
 Data returned
-Must have both absolute consistency
and relative consistency
 Real-time Vs General Purpose
Databases (Contd..)
 Absolute consistency - is the accuracy

 Relative consistency - for multiple data,

the data must have been collected
reasonably close to one another
 Real-time Vs General Purpose
Databases (Contd..)
 Example
Boiler temperature and pressure
Time temperature pressure
100 100 360
200 300 720
300 700 100
 Need For Response Time
Predictability
 Since the tasks in real time systems have
deadlines, it is important that transactions
response times be predictable

 There are many factors that make it

difficult to predict response times
 Factors Affecting Predictability
 Transactions may be aborted to avoid
deadlock
 Page faults -this occurs when part of the
data is stored on main memory and part
of it is stored on the disk systems

T1 system
Main
memory

Part of Data
for T1 Disk
 Factors Affecting Predictability
(contd..)

 Transaction read/write may be data

dependent

 Transaction may suffer a delay because

they are waiting for another to complete
 Pre Analysis
 Pre analysis is done in order to make sure
A transaction completes within its
deadline

 Dry run the transaction to evaluate the

processor,data and other needs
 Dry Run the Transaction
 During the process of dry run,
 No writes are permitted
 All the data required are brought to the main
memory by the end of dry run, so no page fault
occurs
 Database recovery is not initiated if the resources are
not available, since nothing is written to the database
 Dry run guarantees that the transaction
completes within its deadline
 Relaxing the ACID Properties
 Durability : durability can not be
considered in some cases
 Example- if some data is collected on
something, it is discarded after it is outdated

 Serialization consistency can be relaxed in

cases
 Disk Storage
 Problems with the disk storage
 How to prioritize and schedule disk accesses
 How to position the data on the disk so that
access time is minimized

 By tackling these two problems we can

improve transaction response time
 Disk Storage (Contd..)
Advantages

 Since disks are passive data storage

devices,they hold data unless they are
physically damaged
 A system crash does not affect the disk
 When a single disk unit fails, the data on
the other units are not affected
 Main Memory Databases
 Since the disk accesses are slow, in order
to improve the response time, we have
the entire database in the main memory

 This can be done only if the real time

database is small
Main Memory Databases (Contd..)
 If the response time is low, then the
probability of lock contention is also low,
since the transactions will be in the system
for a smaller duration
I.E, there won’t be many transactions
which are trying to access the same
resources
 Main Memory Databases (Contd..)
Transaction Log

 Main memory can be used to write in the

log when the transaction commits

 Since the entire log is too large to be held

in the main memory, it is copied to the
disk
 Main Memory Databases (Contd..)
Transaction Log
 Transaction by transaction
 Every time a transaction commits ,its log is
written to the disk

t1 t1
t2 t2
Main
t3 memory t3 Disk
t4 t4
 Main Memory Databases (Contd..)
Transaction Log
 Batch mode
 The system waits until a certain volume of
transactions is committed and then copies the
entire batch to the disk
buffer
t1 t1

}
t2 t2 batch
Main Disk
t3 memory t3
t4 t4
 Main Memory Databases (Contd..)

 Organizing
 It is done by pointers, if the data occurs
more than once in the database,we can
simply store one copy of this and have
pointers to it
 Using pointers makes many of the tasks
easier
 Main Memory Databases (Contd..)
Drawbacks

 Frequent back ups are necessary

 Main memory has to be restored after a
system crash
 If the main memory fails , entire system
Has to be restored
 In case of a crash , the database must be
stored with data along with the log
 Databases for Hard Real Time
Systems
 MDARTS - is an example of a hard real
time database system , it stands for
multiprocessor database architecture for
real time systems
 Used mainly in control applications, such
as controlling machine tools and robots
etc
 References
 Real-time systems - C.M krishna and G shin
 Real-time systems design and analysis
-Phillip A. Laplante
 Real-time.Org
Thank You !