Hierarchical storage management for relational databases

The author describes a prototype that integrates a database management system (DBMS) with a storage management system, allowing simple, cost-effective access to large volumes of data stored in a tape archive. The prototype study suggests that it is feasible from both technical and cost perspectives to store not just metadata, but large satellite images in a DBMS. The actual location of the data, whether in the DBMS, file system, or tape archive, is transparent to clients, allowing cost/performance optimization to be performed without affecting the interface to the client. Further, in common cases where database inserts can be bypassed, the performance of the prototype is equivalent to file system input/output (I/O)