Scattered database access - Concept and implementation
This paper discusses a new form of network database access with mobile agent technology where many small database servers are distributed geographically, and are accessed through dial-up network on-demand. Coined "scattered database access" here, it enables such interesting ways of data access as asynchronous, circulatory, and the-more-you-spend-the-more-you-get kind of access. Databases to be accessed are relational databases, possibly from many different vendors, and PDM databases, also from several vendors. Relational databases, or RDBs, can be accessed by the SQL, an international standard that allows the interoperability of different RDB products in general. On the other hand, PDM databases, the data-stores for Product Data Management software, are not as inter-operable as RDBs, since the product-specific set of APIs has to be used to access them. An SQL-like language and a parser framework have been introduced to solve this problem. By implementing the parser as an object-oriented framework, the workload to adapt to many PDM products has been greatly reduced. The design and preliminary implementation has been carried out in a government-sponsored GALS project in Japan, and has been proven viable in the field, where a large steel-making company gathering information from many subordinate companies around the steel plant, and from other steel companies and equipment manufacturers.
mobile agent sql java jdbc product data management (pdm)