X-Ray: Monitoring and Analysis of Distributed Database Queries

The integration of multiple database technologies, including both SQL and NoSQL, allows using the best tool for each aspect of a complex problem and is increasingly sought in practice. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for database developers and administrators to obtain a clear view of the resulting composite data processing paths, as they combine operations chosen by different query optimisers, implemented by different software packages, and partitioned across distributed systems. This work addresses this challenge with the X-Ray framework, that allows monitoring code to be added to a Java-based distributed system by manipulating its bytecode at runtime. The resulting information is collected in a NoSQL database and then processed to visualise data processing paths as required for optimising integrated database systems. This proposal is demonstrated with a distributed query over a federation of Apache Derby database servers and its performance evaluated with the standard TPC-C benchmark workload.