Chapter 7: In-Memory OLTP

Relational database management systems (RDBMSs) were originally architected in the late 1970s. Since the hardware was vastly different in those days, recently, there has been extensive research in the database community indicating that a new design and architectural approach should be required for the hardware available today.

RDBMSs were originally designed under the assumption that computer memory was limited and expensive and that databases were many times larger than the main memory. Because of that, it was decided that data should reside on disk. With current hardware having memory sizes and disk volumes thousands of times larger, and processors thousands of times faster, these assumptions are no longer true. In addition, disk access has been subject to physical limits since its introduction; it has not increased at a similar pace and continues to be the slowest part of the system. Although memory capacity has grown dramatically – which is not...