Building Scalable Electronic Market Places Using HyperQuery-Based Distributed Query Processing

Alfons Kemper, Christian Wiesner

Abstract: Flexible distributed query processing capabilities are an important prerequisite for building scalable Internet applications, such as electronic Business-to-Business (B2B) market places. Architecting an electronic market place in a conventional data warehouse-like approach by integrating all the data from all participating enterprises in one centralized repository incurs severe problems: stale data, data security threats, administration overhead, inflexibility during query processing, etc. In this paper we present a new framework for dynamic distributed query processing based on so-called HyperQueries which are essentially query evaluation sub-plans “sitting behind” hyperlinks. Our approach facilitates the pre-materialization of static data at the market place whereas the dynamic data remains at the data sources. In contrast to traditional data integration systems, our approach executes essential (dynamic) parts of the data-integrating views at the data sources. The other, more static parts of the data are integrated à priori at the central portal, e.g., the market place. The portal serves as an intermediary between clients and data providers which execute their sub-queries referenced via hyperlinks. The hyperlinks are embedded as attribute values within data objects of the intermediary’s database. Retrieving such a virtual object will execute the referenced HyperQuery in order to materialize the missing data. We illustrate the flexibility of this distributed query processing architecture in the context of B2B electronic market places with an example derived from the car manufacturing industry.