Abstract
This paper describes an approach to visualizing concurrency control (CC) algorithms for real-time database systems (RTDBs). This approach is based on the principle of software visualization, which has been applied in related fields. The Model-View-controller (MVC) architecture is used to alleviate the black box syndrome associated with the study of algorithm behaviour for RTDBs Concurrency Controls. We propose a Visualization "exploratory" tool that assists the RTDBS designer in understanding the actual behaviour of the concurrency control algorithms of choice and also in evaluating the performance quality of the algorithm. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach using an optimistic concurrency control model as our case study. The developed tool substantiates the earlier simulation-based performance studies by exposing spikes at some points when visualized dynamically that are not observed using usual static graphs. Eventually this tool helps solve the problem of contradictory assumptions of CC in RTDBs.
