No Knobs

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No Knobs
Dave DeWitt and Dieter Gawlick
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A List of Issues

• Auto Tuning
• Trade-off decisions
• Selection of functionality
• Discovery

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Auto Tuning

• Dynamic allocation of existing resources
• CPUs (blades), CPU cycles, processes, memory,
  storage, bandwidth,
• Index management, materialized view, query
  optimization, query re-write,
• Integrated with failure reaction (Disposable
  disks (RAID), disposable computers (blades))
• Low variance in response time
• Advisors for need/impact of new resources

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Auto Tuning

• Single/multiple database(s)/database instance(s)
• Two computer centers
• Few blade computers in each
• This is mostly engineering work
• Keep knobs
• Make use optional, maybe set by/through
  applications
• Prepare code
• Monitor, adjust
• All database vendors are working hard on it

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Auto Tuning

• Research questions?
• What to do with a bad query/program?
• Reports are not the solution
• 80 case
• How do we know that we are at 80?
• Maybe we are at 1/10 of optimum

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Trade-off Decisions

• Which application/task/user is most important?
• To be defined on high level
• Rules and regulation
• Generic applications should set this should set
  this
• Business value of application
• Business transactions or part thereof
• Generic
• Content dependent
• Organization
• People (static resources)

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Trade-off Decision

• To be used as input for auto tuning
• A model for high level abstractions would be
  helpful - Research issue?

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Selection of Functionality

• Feature Enabling
• Option
• Customization, preferences
• Sources
• Rules and regulations
• Domain, enterprise, department, people
• (Security)
• Should be closely tied to model for trade-off
  decisions

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Discovery

• Low level discovery process
• New/broken disks, blades,
• Depending on naming conventions and standards
• Mostly a systematic engineering effort
• High level discovery process
• Semantic transformation ,