This third edition of a classic textbook can be used to teach at the senior undergraduate and graduate levels. The material concentrates on fundamental theories as well as techniques and algorithms. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and, more recently, the emergence of cloud computing and streaming data applications, has forced a renewal of interest in distributed and parallel data management, while, at the same time, requiring a rethinking of some of the traditional techniques. This book covers the breadth and depth of this re-emerging field. The coverage consists of two parts. The first part discusses the fundamental principles of distributed data management and includes distribution design, data integration, distributed query processing and optimization, distributed transaction management, and replication. The second part focuses on more advanced topics and includes discussion of parallel database systems, distributed object management, peer-to-peer data management, web data management, data stream systems, and cloud computing. New in this Edition: â New chapters, covering database replication, database integration, multidatabase query processing, peer-to-peer data management, and web data management. â Coverage of emerging topics such as data streams and cloud computing â Extensive revisions and updates based on years of class testing and feedback Ancillary teaching materials are available.
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. It has been almost twenty years since the first edition of this book appeared, and ten years since we released the second edition. As one can imagine, in a fast changing area such as this, there have been significant changes in the intervening period. Distributed data management went from a potentially significant technology to one that is common place. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web have certainly changed the way we typically look at distribution. The emergence in recent years of different forms of distributed computing, exemplified by data streams and cloud computing, has regenerated interest in distributed data management. Thus, it was time for a major revision of the material. We started to work on this edition five years ago, and it has taken quite a while to complete the work. The end result, however, is a book that has been heavily revised -- while we maintained and updated the core chapters, we have also added new ones. The major changes are the following:
- Database integration and querying is now treated in much more detail, reflecting the attention these topics have received in the community in the past decade. Chapter 4 focuses on the integration process, while Chapter 9 discusses querying over multidatabase systems.
- The previous editions had only brief discussion of data replication protocols. This topic is now covered in a separate chapter (Chapter 13) where we provide an in-depth discussion of the protocols and how they can be integrated with transaction management.
- Peer-to-peer data management is discussed in depth in Chapter 16. These systems have become an important and interesting architectural alternative to classical distributed database systems. Although the early distributed database systems architectures followed the peer-to-peer paradigm, the modern incarnation of these systems have fundamentally different characteristics, so they deserve in-depth discussion in a chapter of their own.
- Web data management is discussed in Chapter 17. This is a difficult topic to cover since there is no unifying framework. We discuss various aspects of the topic ranging from web models to search engines to distributed XML processing.
- Earlier editions contained a chapter where we discussed "recent issues" at the time. In this edition, we again have a similar chapter (Chapter 18) where we cover stream data management and cloud computing. These topics are still in a flux and are subjects of considerable ongoing research. We highlight the issues and the potential research directions.
The resulting manuscript strikes a balance between our two objectives, namely to address new and emerging issues, and maintain the main characteristics of the book in addressing the principles of distributed data management.The organization of the book can be divided into two major parts. The first part covers the fundamental principles of distributed data management and consist of Chapters 1 to 14. Chapter 2 in this part covers the background and can be skipped if the students already have sufficient knowledge of the relational database concepts and the computer network technology. The only part of this chapter that is essential is Example 2.3, which introduces the running example that we use throughout much of the book. The second part covers more advanced topics and includes Chapters 15 - 18. What one covers in a course depends very much on the duration and the course objectives. If the course aims to discuss the fundamental techniques, then it might cover Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6-8, 10-12. An extended coverage would include, in addition to the above, Chapters 4, 9, and 13. Courses that have time to cover more material can selectively pick one or more of Chapters 15-18 from the second part.You will note that the publisher of the third edition of the book is different than the first two editions. Pearson, our previous publisher, decided not to be involved with the third edition. Springer subsequently showed considerable interest in the book. We would like to thank Susan Lagerstrom-Fife and Jennifer Evans of Springer for their lightning-fast decision to publish the book, and Jennifer Mauer for a ton of hand-holding during the conversion process. We would also like to thank Tracy Dunkelberger of Pearson who shepherded the reversal of the copyright to us without delay.As in earlier editions, we will have presentation slides that can be used to teach from the book as well as solutions to most of the exercises. These will be available from Springer to instructors who adopt the book and there will be a link to them from the book's site at springer.com.Finally, we would be very interested to hear your comments and suggestions regarding the material. We welcome any feedback, but we would particularly like to receive feedback on the following aspects:
- any errors that may have remained despite our best efforts (although we hope there are not many);
- any topics that should no longer be included and any topics that should be added or expanded; and
- any exercises that you may have designed that you would like to be included in the book.
