2025/08/09 –, TR213
Operating systems must provide functionality that closely resembles that of a database system, but existing query mechanisms are ad-hoc and idiosyncratic. To address this problem, we argue for the adoption of a relational interface to the operating system kernel. While prior work has made similar proposals, our approach is unique in that it allows for incremental adoption over an existing, production-ready operating system. In this paper, we present progress on a prototype system called OSDB that embodies the incremental approach and discuss key aspects of the design, including the data model and concurrency control mechanisms. We present four example use cases: a network usage monitor, a load balancer, file system checker, and network debugging session, as well as experiments that demonstrate the low overhead for our approach.
Developers, Systems Administrators, DevOPS
難易度:Intermediate
George V. Neville-Neil, works on networking and operating system code for fun and profit and is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Yale University. His areas of interest are computer security, operating systems, networking, time protocols, and the care and feeding of large code bases. He is the author of The Kollected Kode