An Adaptive Probe-Based Technique to Optimize Join Queries in Distributed Internet Databases

An adaptive probe based optimization technique is developed and demonstrated in the context of an Internet based distributed database environment More and more common are database sys tems which are distributed across servers communicating via the Internet where a query at a given site might require data from remote sites Optimizing the response time of such queries is a chal lenging task due to the unpredictability of server performance and network tra c at the time of data shipment this may result in the selection of an expensive query plan using a static query optimizer We constructed an experimental setup consisting of two servers running the same DBMS connected via the Internet Concentrating on join queries we demonstrate how a static query op timizer might choose an expensive plan by mistake This is due to the lack of a priori knowledge of the run time environment inaccurate statistical assumptions in size estimation and neglecting the cost of remote method invocation These shortcomings are addressed collectively by proposing a probing mechanism Furthermore we extend our mechanism with an adaptive technique that detects sub optimality of a plan during query execution and attempts to switch to the cheapest plan while avoiding redundant work and imposing little overhead An implementation of our run time optimization technique for join queries was constructed in the Java language and incorporated into an experimental setup The results demonstrate the superiority of our probe based optimization over a static optimization