III: Small: A Development Environment for Query Optimizer Engineering

最近，新的硬件技术和应用需求引发了对新数据管理系统的一系列研究和开发。这些系统挑战僵化的、遗留的数据库系统的霸权，这些系统缺乏适应这些新限制的灵活性。但是遗留系统所开发的特性(如声明性查询处理)仍然是理想的，因此，许多工作正致力于设计在新系统中提供这些特性的组件。该项目的目标是支持数据管理系统中(查询)优化器的研究和开发。优化器将数据(查询)的声明性描述转换为可执行的计划，本质上是复杂的，但尽管如此，没有专门用于其开发的软件工程工具。因此，本项目的目标是设计和构建devel-op：一个用于优化器的专用开发环境，由以下几组工具组成：1)组件生成器，它使用组件的声明性规范来生成可执行代码。开发人员可以使用生成器来快速制作包含不同优化方法的组件的替代版本的原型，2)分析工具，其帮助开发人员识别生成的组件中的错误或性能瓶颈，以及3)组件基准，其允许评估优化方法(如在生成的组件中所表现的)在促进整体优化方面的有效性和稳健性。DEVEL-OP提供了一个沙盒，其中可以快速原型化、细化优化器，并以最小的工作量进行比较。因此，它的影响将是将软件工程方法应用于数据管理系统这一关键组成部分固有的困难和复杂的开发过程。

Novel hardware technologies and application requirements have recently triggered a flurry of research and development into new data management systems. These systems challenge the hegemony of ossified, legacy database systems which lack the agility to adapt to these new constraints. But features pioneered by legacy systems (e.g., declarative query processing) are still desirable, and therefore, much work is being devoted to designing components that provide these features in new systems.The goal of this project is to support research and development of (query) optimizers in data management systems. Optimizers, which translate declarative descriptions of data (queries) into executable plans, are inherently complex but nonetheless, there are no software engineering tools dedicated to their development. Therefore this project aims to design and build DEVEL-OP: a dedicated DEVELopment Environment for OPtimizers consisting of the following suites of tools: 1) Component Generators, which use declarative specifications of components to produce executable code. Developers can use generators to rapidly prototype alternative versions of components encompassing different optimization approaches, 2) Profiling Tools, which help developers identify bugs or performance bottlenecks in generated components, and 3) Component Benchmarks, which enable the evaluation of optimization approaches (as manifested in generated components) in terms of their effectiveness and robustness in contributing to optimization as a whole.DEVEL-OP provides a sandbox where optimizers can be quickly prototyped, refined and compared with minimal effort. Therefore, its impact will be in applying software engineering methodologies to the inherently difficult and complex development process for this key component of data management systems.