Abstract

Many stream-based applications are naturally distributed. Applications are often embedded in an environment with numerous connected computing devices with heterogeneous capabilities. As data travels from its point of origin (e.g., sensors) downstream to applications, it passes through many computing devices, each of which is a potential target of computation. Furthermore, to cope with time-varying load spikes and changing demand, many servers would be brought to bear on the problem. In both cases, distributed computation is the norm. Abstract Stream processing fits a large class of new applications for which conventional DBMSs fall short. Because many stream-oriented systems are inherently geographically distributed and because distribution offers scalable load management and higher availability, future stream processing systems will operate in a distributed fashion. They will run across the Internet on computers typically owned by multiple cooperating administrative domains. This paper describes the architectural challenges facing the design of large-scale distributed stream processing systems, and discusses novel approaches for addressing load management, high availability, and federated operation issues. We describe two stream processing systems, Aurora* and Medusa, which are being designed to explore complementary solutions to these challenges. This paper discusses the architectural issues facing the design of large-scale distributed stream processing systems. We begin in Section 2 with a brief description of our centralized stream processing system, Aurora