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arXiv:2007.11112cs.OS

DBOS: A Proposal for a Data-Centric Operating System

Michael Cafarella, David DeWitt, Vijay Gadepally, Jeremy Kepner, Christos Kozyrakis, Tim Kraska, Michael Stonebraker, Matei Zaharia

Abstract

Current operating systems are complex systems that were designed before today's computing environments. This makes it difficult for them to meet the scalability, heterogeneity, availability, and security challenges in current cloud and parallel computing environments. To address these problems, we propose a radically new OS design based on data-centric architecture: all operating system state should be represented uniformly as database tables, and operations on this state should be made via queries from otherwise stateless tasks. This design makes it easy to scale and evolve the OS without whole-system refactoring, inspect and debug system state, upgrade components without downtime, manage decisions using machine learning, and implement sophisticated security features. We discuss how a database OS (DBOS) can improve the programmability and performance of many of today's most important applications and propose a plan for the development of a DBOS proof of concept.

arXiv comments
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.OSOperating Systems cs.ARHardware Architecture cs.DBDatabases cs.DCDistributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing cs.NINetworking and Internet Architecture

On Hacker News

Linked by 5 identifiable commenters in 5 comments across 5 threads, from Dec 2020 to Sep 2026. Found in 3 HN submissions from Jul 2020 to Aug 2021. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments5 threads

  1. Postgres SELECT DISTINCT Does Not Scale 1 comment

    • My understanding (possibly flawed) is that Stonebraker isn't directly involved anymore. The original idea that he worked on with the DBOS people at MIT and Stanford was very different and much, much more ambitious, which is why the name DBOS seems a little out of place now. The…

      atombenderView on HNParent context

  2. Dbos: Durable Workflow Orchestration with Go and PostgreSQL 1 comment

    • I remembered reading about the DBOS paper a while back - https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.11112. Is this an evolution of that research work? If so, how did an OS for databases morph into a workflow orchestration service?

      intermerdaView on HNParent context

  3. Postgres pioneer Michael Stonebraker promises to upend the database once more 1 comment
  4. DBOS: A database-oriented operating system 1 comment

    • Sounds like that's actually their plan for the first pass (reading their papers now): > While the DBMS engine will need some basic resource management functionality to bootstrap its execution, this could be done over a cluster of servers running current OSs, and eventually…

      JtsummersView on HNParent context

  5. Ask HN: What's the best paper you've read in 2020? 1 comment

    • DBOS: A Proposal for a Data-Centric Operating System https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.11112 Even if a bit impractical in some regrards, I think an operating system/cloud that you interact with like a database is something we should aspirationally strive for. We're spending too much…

      rubiquityView on HNParent context

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