Abstract: Parallel database machine architectures have evolved from the use of exotic hardware to a software parallel dataflow architecture based on conventional shared-nothing hardware. These new designs provide impressive speedup and scaleup when processing relational database queries. This paper reviews the techniques used by such systems, and surveys current commercial and research systems. 1.

Abstract: Large scientific applications which rely on highly parallel computational analysis require highly parallel data access. We describe an object-oriented, scientific database system that achieves nearly linear scale-up over large, million object data sets. Of primary importance are those features which seem central to the development of this, or any other parallel database system. These include techniques of object distribution, of multi-operator parallelism, and of indirect object referencing. It also appears to require a query server architecture instead of the more common page server configurations. 1.