1.72 Architecture Overview

The architecture is built around a few independent components: the MonetDB server, the merovigian, and the client application. The MonetDB server is the heart of the system, it manages a single physical database on one machine for all (concurrent) applications. The merovigian program works along side a single server, keeping an eye on its behavior. If the server accidently crashes, it is this program that will attempt an automatic restart.

The top layer consists of applications written in your favorite language. They provide both specific functionality for a particular product, e.g., Proximity, and generic functionality, e.g., the Aquabrowser or Dbvisualizer. The applications communicate with the server using de-facto standard interface packaged, i.e., JDBC, ODBC, Perl, PHP, etc.

The middle layer consists of query language processors such as SQL and XQuery. The former supports the core functionality of SQL'99 and extends into SQL'03. The latter is based on the W3C standard and includes the XUpdate functionality. The query language processors each manage their own private catalog structure. Software bridges, e.g., import/export routines, are used to share data between language paradigms.