SQLinked - A Hybrid Approach for Local and Database-Remote Program Execution

When working with today's relational databases, there is usually a clear boundary between the database server and the application, that interfaces with the database system using the query language SQL. The concept of stored procedures allows to move complex parts of the business logic into the database server for various reasons, as, for instance, to reduce the latency of ELT processes that involve several database queries building on each other like distributing records into tables according to their attribute values. Creating and maintaining such stored procedures can be a challenging task, however. The idea pursued in this paper is to create a programming language, as well as a compilation and execution environment that allows the user to mark parts of the application code for being automatically compiled to and later be executed as a stored procedure in the database instead of the execution environment of the actual application. This blurs the border between database and application and provides a natural and maintenance-friendly way for offloading latency sensitive parts of the code to the database system.