Distributed Database Systems

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[Name of Instructor]

CHAPTER 02: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter will survey the relevant literature in accordance with the project selected, that is, distributed database systems. With the evolution of information technology, distributed database systems have become part and parcel of almost all the businesses and enterprises (Osman et al., 2008). However, with the drastic escalation of distributed database systems, there is a need to monitor the performance of such systems on regular basis through a proper framework. Keeping this concept in mind, the literature review will strive to monitor the performance of a Distributed Database System at organizational level. The literature search will also explore the benefits of implementing a performance monitoring initiative for Distributed Database System in an organization.

Parameters of the Topic

The literature review will help in achieving the aims and objectives of thesis, as well as, will help in presenting a performance monitoring model that can help to monitor the performance in a better way, as compared to various other models, which organizations are using currently. Additionally, the review of contemporary academic literature will also help in analyzing the impact of a compact performance monitoring system of Distributed Database on the related business, as well as, its profitably. However, the thesis will not cover other performance monitoring models that many organizations are using presently.

Basis for Literature Search

The measurements of choice for conducting the literature review for the study will be relevancy to research topic and year of publishing. Various online libraries, journals and databases will be researched and reviewed in order to gain an extensive insight and comprehension of the issue being studied. Facts will be accumulated to support the study that has been conveyed. To gather proper information about the study, scholarly as well as non-scholarly articles will also be searched and considered. Some of the examples of databases that will be used include Google Scholar, Academia Search Premier, EBSCO, Pro-Quest and other relevant websites were explored. The keywords used to search the literature are Distributed Database Systems, performance measurement of Distributed Database Systems, Performance Evaluation Techniques and Distributed Database Benchmarking.

Distributed Database Systems

A Distributed Database is defined as a system that comprises of a variety of multiple, logically interrelated databases that are spread over a computer network (Ozsu & Valduriez, 1991). However, a Distributed Database System is a combination of Distributed Database and its management (Ozsu & Valduriez, 1991). Performance monitoring of Distributed Database System is not a single task. Just like other systems, it also involves the elements of reliability, availability and fault tolerance. Business organizations depends largely on electronic data, therefore wrong information can hurt them badly in various ways. In the current situation, performance monitoring has been made more complicated with the introduction of different varieties of Database Systems (Pei et al., 2000).

A comprehensive research has been performed on this subject, in the past, which can guide to take this research forward. The pioneer work in performance monitoring was done by Sevick (1981). He presented a layered queuing model for the prediction of Distributed ...