A closer look at database replication middleware architectures for enterprise applications

Abstract

Middleware-supported database replication is a way to increase performance and tolerate failures of enterprise applications. Middleware architectures distinguish themselves by their performance, scalability and their application interface, on one hand, and the degree to which they guarantee replication consistency, on the other. Both groups of features may conflict since the latter comes with an overhead that bears on me former. We review different techniques proposed to achieve and measure improvements of the performance, scalability and overhead introduced by different degrees of data consistency. We do so with a particular emphasis on the requirements of enterprise applications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.