Datplex: an Extensible Design-aid Tool for Physical Database Design

In this paper, we describe DATPLEX, an extensible design-aid tool for physical database design. DAT-PLEX adopts a layered approach where each layer improves over its input design; and is \extensible" in the sense that an additional layer can be \plugged" into the tool, or an existing layer can be removed from the tool. The current implementation comprises three layers that improve the logical schema through vertical partitioning, denormalization, and storage structure and index selection. A series of experiments were conducted to study the quality of designs generated by DATPLEX. The results show that DATPLEX can generate designs that lead to signiicant savings.