Batches for remote services and databases

William R. Cook

Batches are a new approach to relational database access, remote procedure calls, and web services.

A Remote Batch statement combines remote and local execution: all the remote code is executed in a single round-trip to the server, where all data sent to the server and results from the batch are communicated in bulk. Batches support remote blocks, iteration and conditionals, and local handling of remote exceptions. Batches are efficient even for fine-grained interfaces, eliminating the need for hand-optimized server interfaces.

Batch services also provide a simple and powerful interface to relational databases, with support for arbitrary nested queries and bulk updates. One important property of the system is that a single batch statement always generates a constant number of SQL queries, no matter how many nested loops are used.

Implementation

• Batch Java Runtime (GitHub)
  Includes a SQL gateway for batches, TCP transport with JSON and XML

• Batch Javac Language Extension (GitHub)
  Implements the "batch" statement in javac

• Batch Python Runtime (GitHub)

Talks

• Talk on Batches on JavaOne
• Recording of talk at the 2012 JVM Summit
• Talk given as a Microsoft Research seminar in Fall 2011

Papers

• NEW: Batches wiki

• Remote Batch Invocation for Compositional Object Services
  European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2009)
  Ali Ibrahim, Yang Jiao, Eli Tilevich, William R. Cook
  (Updated Slides)

• Remote Batch Invocation for SQL Databases
  Ben Wiedermann and William R. Cook
  The 13th International Symposium on Database Programming Languages (DBPL), 2011.

• Remote Batch Invocation for Web Services:
  Document-Oriented Web Services with Object-Oriented Interfaces
  Ali Ibrahim, Yang Jiao, Marc Fisher II, William R. Cook, Eli Tilevich
  European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS) 2009

• Older papers

  • Explicit Batching for Distributed Objects
    Eli Tilevich, William R. Cook, Yang Jiao
    Int’l Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2009).

  • Web Services versus Distributed Objects: A Case Study of Performance and Interface Design
    William R. Cook, Janel Barfield
    Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Web Services ( ICWS) 2006.
    September 18-22, Chicago, USA

Collaboration

Eli Tilevitch

Students

• Ali Ibrahim: Safe Query Objects & Learning database query extents

• Ben Wiedermann: Extracting relational queries via control/data flow analysis

Grants

• NSF CAREER #CCF-0448128: Integrating Programming Languages and Databases. March 1, 2005
  
  This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0448128. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.