Java support for data-intensive systems

Abstract

Database system designers have traditionally had trouble with the default services and interfaces provided by operating systems. In recent years, developers and enthusiasts have increasingly promoted Java as a serious platform for building data-intensive servers. Java provides a number of very helpful language features, as well as a full run-time environment reminiscent of a traditional operating system. This combination of features and community support raises the question of whether Java is better or worse at supporting data-intensive server software than a traditional operating system coupled with a weakly-typed language such as C or C++.In this paper, we summarize and discuss our experience building the Telegraph dataflow system in Java. We highlight some of the pleasures of coding with Java, and some of the pains of coding around Java in order to obtain good performance in a data-intensive server. For those issues that were painful, we present concrete suggestions for evolving Java's interfaces to better suit serious software systems development. We believe these experiences can provide insight for other designers to avoid pitfalls we encountered and to decide if Java is a suitable platform for their system.