The Heterogeneity Problem and Middleware Technology: Experiences with and Performance of Database Gateways

In this paper, we present the results that we have obtained by comparing and testing three well-known database middleware solutions. We have analyzed their features related to global catalog and location transparency, transaction management, DML and DDL operations, SQL-dialects mask, referential integrity, security, scalability, supported data sources and platforms, query optimization, and performance. In particular, we have adapted and implemented the AS3AP benchmark to exhaustively evaluate the performance of the products.