Mutant Query Plans

Abstract We propose a flexible and robust framework for distributed query processing based on mutant query plans (MQP). A MQP is an XML representation of a query plan that can also include verbatim XML data, references to resource locations (URLs), or abstract resource names (URNs). Servers work using local, possibly incomplete knowledge, partially evaluate as much of the query plan as they can, incorporate the partial results into a new, mutated query plan and transfer it to some other server that can continue processing. We have implemented an initial version of this framework, and present preliminary performance results.