Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 7, numbers 3 and 4, 2014 // View article

A Novel Distributed Database Synchronization Approach with an Application to 3D Simulation

Authors:
Martin Hoppen
Juergen Rossmann

Keywords: Database Synchronization; 3D Simulation; Distributed Database; Applications

Abstract:
3D (three-dimensional) simulation applications from various fields benefit from the usage of database technology. In contrast to the prevailing naive file-based approach, simulation models can be managed more efficiently, temporal databases can be used to log simulation runs, and active databases provide a means for communication. Thus, we use a central database to manage shared simulation models. To enable real-time access, each simulation client caches the model to its local runtime (in-memory) simulation database. For that purpose, a pairwise synchronization is needed between each runtime database and the central database. After a synchronization on schema level, each client replicates data on-demand. In this publication, we give a detailed description of our notification-based approach to keep master copies in sync with their replicate copies. The state of synchronization in between a pair of copies as well as allowed state transitions are comprehensively modeled using state machines. Moreover, we present three representative applications already using the approach, proving its practicability: City simulations, a Virtual Testbed for space robotics, and a forest inventory, management and simulation system.

Pages: 601 to 616

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2014. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2014

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628