LH*-a tool for interoperability at the file access level

Distributed database managers were traditionally designed to interoperate at the query processing level. The rationale for this approach was the limited network bandwidth, prohibiting efficient interoperability at the file or OS levels for database management. New LANs offer order of magnitude higher bandwidths. Database managers can now efficiently interoperate at the file management level. One problem to be solved, though, is the scalability of distributed files. The authors report the work in progress on a new class of data structures, extensible distributed data structures. They focus on one such data structure termed LH^*. Through the description of the on-going experiences with LH^*, they conclude that it appears particularly promising