Kappa

Abandoned Project

Kappa was a parallel DBMS designed for knowledge information processing (KIPS). The name Kappa is an acronym for Knowledge APPlication oriented Advanced DBMS.

The system is written in a mixture of C and parallelized variant of Prolog called KL1.

History

Kappa was developed as part of the the "Fifth Generation Computer Systems" initiative in the 1980s by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to create computers using massively parallel computing and logic programming.

The last version of Kappa was released in 1999.

Data Model

Object-Relational

Kappa uses a "nested relational model" that is similar to the document model in that it supported non-scalar values (e.g., arrays, nested records). It is seen as a precursor to object-relational model.

Parallel Execution

Intra-Operator (Horizontal)

Query Interface

Custom API

System Architecture

Shared-Nothing

Kappa Logo
Website

https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/Museum/SOFTWARE/KAPPA/outline-E.html

Source Code

https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/Museum/IFS/abst/087.html

Tech Docs

https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/Museum/SOFTWARE/KAPPA/pdst-E/pdst-E.html

Developer

Institute for New Generation Computer Technology

Country of Origin

JP

Start Year

1989

End Year

1999

Project Type

Industrial Research, Open Source

Written in

C, KL1

Operating Systems

Solaris

Licenses

Proprietary