Processing and Transaction Concepts for Cooperation of Engineering Workstations and a Database Server

A DBMS kernel architecture is proposed for improved DB support of engineering applications running on a cluster of workstations. Using such an approach, part of the DBMS codeman applicationspecific layermis allocated close to the corresponding application on a workstation while the kernel code is executed on a central server. Empirical performance results from DB-based engineering applications are reported to justify the chosen DBMS architecture. The paper focuses on design issues of the application layer including server coupling, processing model and application interface. Moreover, a transaction model for long-term database work in a coupled workstationserver environment is investigated in detail. Keywords, Engineering databases, design transactions, workstation-server coupling, object processing, locality.