Design decisions for the intelligent database machine by ROBERT EPSTEIN and PAULA HAWTHORN

The Intelligent Database Machine (IDM), manufactured by Britton-Lee Inc., is a back-end processor and storage system that contains a complete data management system. It includes specialized hardware to perform data management functions. It is our contention that the designers of a database machine must choose a focus for their machine which strongly influences other design decisions. The IDM is low cost, high performance machine designed to support' 'midrange" users. This paper presents the reasons for this choice, and the resultant design issues. The discussion is divided into four sections. In section two we describe our conception of the population of database users. We show that a single machine cannot solve all classes of user performance and cost problems. We identify the class of applications for which we focus the IDM. In section three we discuss the design trade-offs for that class of applications. The last section, section 4, is the conclusion.