System integration: Federated databases

McLeod and Heimbigner (1985) states a Federated Database Architecture, as one which define the architecture and interconnect databases that minimize central authority yet support partial sharing and coordination among database systems.

Federated architectures differ based on levels of integration with the component database systems and the extent of services offered by the federation. It can be categorized as loosely or tightly coupled systems.

Fault-tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components. Fault-tolerance is particularly sought-after in high-availability.

The basic characteristics of fault tolerance require:
• No single point of repair
• Fault isolation to the failing component
• Fault containment to prevent propagation of the failure
• Availability of reversion modes

MySQL Cluster is a high availability database which leverages a shared-nothing data storage architecture. The system consists of multiple nodes which can be distributed across hosts to ensure continuous availability in the event of a data node, hardware or network failure. With this distributed architecture, where dependencies have been minimized, applications continue to run and data remains consistent, even if any one of the Data, Application, or Management Nodes fail.

Reference:
Heimbigner, D. and McLeod, D. (1985). A Federated architecture for information management. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Volume 3, Issue 3. pp. 253–278.

MySQL 2010, How to Use FEDERATED Tables, viewed 19 May 2010, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/federated-use.html

MySQL 2010, MySQL Cluster Architecture, viewed 20 May 2010, http://mysql.com/products/database/cluster/architecture.html

Wikipedia 2010, Federated database system, last modified 29 December 2009, viewed 19 May 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_database_system

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