Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 1669–1670Cite as

Main Memory DBMS

  • Reference work entry

  • 446 Accesses

Synonyms

In-memory DBMS; MMDBMS

Definition

A main memory database system is a DBMS that primarily relies on main memory for computer data storage. In contrast, conventional database management systems typically employ hard disk based persistent storage.

Key Points

The main advantage of MMDBMS over normal DBMS technology is superior performance, as I/O cost is no more a performance cost factor. With I/O as main optimization focus eliminated, the architecture of main memory database systems typically aims at optimizing CPU cost and CPU cache usage, leading to different data layout strategies (avoiding complex tuple representations) as well as indexing structures (e.g., B-trees with lower-fan-outs with nodes of one or a few CPU cache lines).

While built on top of volatile storage, most MMDB products offer ACID properties, via the following mechanisms: (i) Transaction Logging, which records changes to the database in a journal file and facilitates automatic recovery of an in-memory...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   2,500.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Bohannon P., Lieuwen D.F., Rastogi R., Silberschatz A., Seshadri S., and Sudarshan S. The architecture of the dalí main-memory storage manager. Multimedia Tools Appl., 4(2):115–151, 1997.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Boncz P.A. and Kersten M.L. MIL primitives for querying a fragmented world. VLDB J., 8(2):101–119, 1999.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. DeWitt D.J., Katz R.H., Olken F., Shapiro L.D., Stonebraker M., and Wood D.A. Implementation techniques for main memory database systems. In Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int. Conf. on Management of Data, 1984, pp. 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Hvasshovd S-O., Torbjørnsen Ø., Bratsberg S.E., and Holager P. The ClustRa telecom database: high availability, high throughput, and real-time response. In Proc. 21th Int. Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, 1995, pp. 469–477.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Peter Boncz

Authors
  1. Peter Boncz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Boncz, P. (2009). Main Memory DBMS. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_655

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation