An experiment in dedicated data management

There is growing concern among users of data base management systems regarding the cost and performance of such systems. As is typical of highly complex, generalized software, data management systems can be expensive to run, particularly in terms of processing time. A possible solution to this problem is to offload the data management functions into an inexpensive, dedicated minicomputer, called a dedicated data management computer, or DDM. This "backend" approach to the problem has been investigated by Bell Telephone Laboratories [1], using a large DBTG-based system. Their results indicated that such an approach is feasible, though no performance figures have been published. In an effort to obtain more detailed data on the performance implications of a DDM system, two experiments were performed by the Sperry Corporate Research Center. The first experiment was designed to obtain estimates of the percentage of CP time which could be offloaded from the host to a DDM. The second experiment, a prototype implementation of a DDM configuration using a standard minicomputer, was designed to demonstrate the credibility of such a system.