Providing database as a service

We explore a novel paradigm for data management in which a third party service provider hosts "database as a service", providing its customers with seamless mechanisms to create, store, and access their databases at the host site. Such a model alleviates the need for organizations to purchase expensive hardware and software, deal with software upgrades, and hire professionals for administrative and maintenance tasks which are taken over by the service provider. We have developed and deployed a database service on the Internet, called NetDB2, which is in constant use. In a sense, a data management model supported by NetDB2 provides an effective mechanism for organizations to purchase data management as a service, thereby freeing them to concentrate on their core businesses. Among the primary challenges introduced by "database as a service" are the additional overhead of remote access to data, an infrastructure to guarantee data privacy, and user interface design for such a service. These issues are investigated. We identify data privacy as a particularly vital problem and propose alternative solutions based on data encryption. The paper is meant as a challenge for the database community to explore a rich set of research issues that arise in developing such a service.