The Case for Object Databases in Cloud Data Management

With the emergence of cloud computing, new data management requirements have surfaced. Currently, these challenges are studied exclusively in the setting of relational databases. We believe that there exist strong indicators that the full potential of cloud computing data management can only be leveraged by exploiting object database technologies. Object databases are a popular choice for analytical data management applications which are predicted to profit most from cloud computing. Furthermore, objects and relationships might be useful units to model and implement data partitions, while, at the same time, helping to reduce join processing. Finally, the service-oriented view taken by cloud computing is in its nature a close match to object models. In this position paper, we examine the challenges of cloud computing data management and show opportunities for object database technologies based on these requirements.