Database design in the modern organization – identifying robust structures under changing query patterns and arrival rate conditions

We summarize the problem tackled here in the following way: Given a modern database application environment, how can we identify and select the database structure that provides robust performance across changing query patterns and arrival rate conditions? We demonstrate the importance of investigating the underlying relationships and then utilize this information in formulating robust structures. Our work is pre-theory in the philosophy of science sense. That is, the careful identification and observation of relationships will subsequently be utilized in formulating a testable theory of the development of robust database structures under dynamic query patterns and arrival rates. Our first step in providing a database design or “structure selection” method is to determine potential good performers among different database structures. These potential good performers are selected and analyzed across arrays of query patterns. The next step is to identify database structures that are robust structures, that is good performers across the different types of query patterns and arrival rate levels. The presentation includes illustrations of the determination of actual query pattern processing times and the use of these times within a queuing analysis. In fact, for the database layout analyzed, application of our methods demonstrates the existence of such robust database structures.