Intra-function Parallelism

Abstract

In this chapter we focus on intra-function parallelism for expensive functions that operate on large objects (LOBs). Intra-function parallelism means that the invocation of a scalar function which operates on a single LOB is computed in parallel. Intrafunction parallelism is orthogonal to data parallelism and hence this kind of parallelism can still be exploited, if data parallelism is not applicable. In this chapter we present an approach to enable intra-function parallelism in PORDBMS. Since LOBs can be used to implement collection data types like arrays and sets that are proposed for future SQL standards, our technique to enable intra-function parallelism might be useful for parallel processing of collection types as well.