Chipotle—Highly Available XML Database with P2P Architecture

ATC-NY, in collaboration with Cornell University and Architecture Technology Corporation, is building Chipotle, a distributed XML database targeting the needs of the MDA, other DoD operations, and commercial applications. The Chipotle system will be highly resistant to failures, require no centralized control (and thus present no central point of attack), and be highly robust in the face of component and network failure. Scalability and fault tolerance are provided by structuring the database system as a peer-to-peer (P2P) system. Building on previous work at ATC-NY and Cornell, Chipotle improves on existing P2P systems by supporting rich database queries, including XML XPath expressions, and by providing the security needed for practical deployment in critical applications.

Competing fault-tolerant XML databases with conventional architecture require unusual levels of expertise to configure and deploy, and may require specialized host hardware. Reconfiguring such systems in response to rapidly changing circumstances is often not practical. In contrast, Chipotle will be self-organizing, and will run on heterogeneous commodity hardware. Thus, organizations that must rapidly expand their database can easily do so by simply adding more hosts. Hosts that must be taken off-line for maintenance may simply be powered down or disconnected – without affecting the availability of the database or its contents.