Overview of Blockchain and Database Fusion

doi:10.3778/j.issn.1673-9418.2211021

Abstract

Abstract: Recently, blockchain has been increasingly applied in finance and other fields, which is designed with the purpose to achieve secure and trusted data storage while reducing the efficiency. Meanwhile, its insufficient technological accumulation causes technology support shortage, which limits its development. As another data storage technology with development history for decades, database has a series of comparatively mature and complete technologies. As two widely-used data storage technologies, it is a significative research direction to integrate these two technologies through system architecture design and achieve a new generation of data storage technology. Based on the description of the design concept, technical characteristics and overall architecture of blockchain and database technology, the commonalities and differences as well as the advantages and disadvantages between these two data storage techniques are analyzed from several perspectives. From these perspectives and taking the two technology integration paradigms of out-of-the blockchain database and out-of-the database blockchain as the benchmark, this paper summarizes the existing works of blockchain and database technology integration. Furthermore, the crucial problems and future development directions of blockchains and database technology integration are analyzed from a variety of dimensions.

Key words: blockchain, database, distributed system, architecture design

摘要： 近年来，区块链在金融等领域的应用日益增加，其设计的目的在于实现安全可信的数据存储，因此牺牲了效率，同时技术积累较少的劣势使得区块链缺少很好的辅助性技术支持，这些问题都限制了区块链技术的进一步发展。数据库同样作为数据存储技术，已有数十年的发展历史，技术体系相对成熟完善。区块链和数据库均作为被广泛应用的数据存储技术，通过系统架构设计将两种技术相互融合，实现新一代的数据存储技术，是很有价值的研究方向。通过对区块链和数据库技术的设计理念、技术特性、整体架构的阐述，深层次地从多个角度分析两类数据存储技术之间的共性和差异性与设计理念的优劣。从设计的角度出发，以基于区块链的数据库和基于数据库的区块链两种技术融合范式为基准，对现有的区块链与数据库技术融合的工作进行归纳总结。在此之上，进一步从数据存储技术设计的各个维度，分析区块链与数据库技术融合的关键问题与未来发展方向。

关键词: 区块链, 数据库, 分布式系统, 架构设计

LI Xinhang, LI Chao, ZHANG Guigang, XING Chunxiao. Overview of Blockchain and Database Fusion[J]. Journal of Frontiers of Computer Science and Technology, 2023, 17(4): 761-770.

李昕航, 李超, 张桂刚, 邢春晓. 区块链与数据库技术融合综述[J]. 计算机科学与探索, 2023, 17(4): 761-770.

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