Query Answering in Peer-to-Peer Database Networks

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) received significant attention from both industry and academia as a version of distributed computing lying between traditional distributed systems and the web. P2P found lots of its application in file sharing systems, distributed computations, instant messaging systems and so on. Database community investigates P2P as a new decentralized paradigm for distributed management of data, that gives sound advantages over existing database systems, and also raises some challenges for thorough research in this area. The main focuses of the current PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Fausto Giunchiglia, are the study of the optimal balance of centralization vs. decentralization levels in a P2P database network necessary for efficient query answering; development of logical and physical architecture to support P2P databases; development of a query answering algorithm and a formal theory that would describe P2P databases as well as query answering and its quality; development of a prototype and conducting of the performance study in different initial settings.