MINIX for a distributed database system

Abstract

A user of a distributed database management system must be able to access data which is stored on a number of different sites, connected by a network, without being aware of the physical data distribution. The NRDNIX distributed database management system consists of four major components, namely the presentation manager, communication kernel, database manager and network manager. The development of a distributed system requires the addition of communication capabilities to the supporting operating system. The MINIX operating system could be considered as a possible implementation environment. MINIX is based on the client-server message passing model. Architecturally it consists of a user layer, a server layer and two kernel layers. A distributed database implementation using MINIX can be configured as a database server process, an extension to the existing file system, a specialized database file system, a network operating system process or a distributed operating system process. MINIX has a number of drawbacks, namely deadlock, alarm signals, deviations from the message passing model and memory limitations. The severity of the fundamentals design flaws in MINIX render it unusable for the implementation of a distributed database management system.