Toward Autonomic DBMSs: A Self-Configuring Algorithm for DBMS Buffer Pools

Abstract

This chapter introduces autonomic computing as a means to automate the complex tuning, configuration, and optimization tasks that are currently the responsibility of the database administrator. We describe an algorithm called the dynamic reconfiguration algorithm (DRF) that can be implemented as part of an autonomic database management system (DBMS) to manage the DBMS buffer pools, which are a key resource in a DBMS. DRF is an iterative algorithm that uses greedy heuristics to find a reallocation that benefits a target transaction class. DRF uses the principle of goal-oriented resource management. We define and motivate the cost- estimate equations used in the algorithm and present the results of a set of experiments to investigate the performance of the algorithm.