Efficient execution of operations in a DBMS for multidimensional arrays

In the RasDaMan project a database system for management of multidimensional arrays is being built. It offers a declarative query language extending SQL-92 with operations on arrays of arbitrary base types and a C++ programming interface. Integrating arrays in the query language enables the system to process complex queries on high-volume multidimensional data in the database server close to physical data storage. Storage of arrays is done in tiles of arbitrary size. Operations on arrays are transformed into operations on tiles during query optimization and execution. These operations are then executed on tiles loaded from mass storage. This paper describes the underlying formal model for tile based operations on multidimensional arrays and its efficient implementation in C++ as part of the RasDaMan system