SOURCE:

Faculty: Physical Sciences
Department: Computer Science

CONTRIBUTORS:

Okeke, K. K.
Ejiofor, V. E.

ABSTRACT:

Relational databases have been the norm in the Information Technology (IT) industry because of the ease of operation when low-cost servers were considered to be extremely powerful. However, with the advent of web 2.0 technology and expansion in computer growth, these databases were unable to sustain most major demands like speed, scalability, reliability, continuous availability, cost reduction and location independence.As a result of this inadequacy, the NoSQL systems were built to combat this complexity. The NoSQL systems were unable to fully address this problem. In order to address these problems, an enhanced data distributed system is desired. The research focused on design and implementation of a cross-platform database system for Structured Query Language (SQL) and “Not only SQL” (NoSQL) interoperability. Iterative and Incremental methodology was adopted. A conceptual framework involving a new high level model and architectural layout was formed for exploring strength of the database management system. Interoperability of five database engines (MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis and for inclusiveness Neo4j) was done using PHP scripting language and parkers for uniform interactions across the database engines and the layer. Test operations for Create/Insert, Read, Write and Delete were carried out using 500, 5,000 and 10,000 records respectively for the individual systems. The experimental results showed test results for the individual databases; MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis and Neo4j graph NoSQL system based on speed, performance and ability to move data about. Qualitative and quantitative metrics were deployed for evaluating the performance of seven different hybrid models. In a read-intensive environment, MySQL and MongoDB performed better than the other systems while Cassandra performed better than the other systems in a write-intensive environment. The tests showed Redis system to be best for insert operations as it performed insertions faster than the other systems involved. MySQL and MongoDB were also discovered to be very good for performing deletions in the database. The strengths and weaknesses of these systems were ascertained through these tests and with this knowledge; an integrated, distributive, interoperable cross-platform database system with better throughput was built. The hybrid system (NoSQL2) developed did not only solve the problem of movement of data and speedy access to information domiciled in the database but offered effective and automatic load balancing from the different database engines.