DELTA: A Modular, Transparent and Efficient Synchronization of DLTs and
Databases
Abstract
Besides cryptocurrencies, DLTs may be also exploited in enterprise
systems operated by a consortium of organizations. Their interaction
takes usually place on a permissioned blockchain network that holds a
set of data to be queried frequently. In this scope, the main problem of
DLTs is their unsuitability for a fast service of complex queries on
those data. In order to solve this issue, many proposals dump the ledger
contents onto databases that, because of their own goals and design, are
already optimized for the execution of those queries. Unfortunately,
many of those proposals assume that the data to be queried consist in
only a block or (cryptocurrency-related) transaction history. However,
those organization consortiums commonly store other structured
business-related information in the DLT, and there is an evident lack of
support for querying that other kind of structured data. To remedy those
problems, DELTA synchronizes, with minimal overhead, the DLT state into
a database, providing: (1) a modular architecture with event-based
handling of DLT updates that supports different DLTs and databases, (2)
a transparent management, since DLT end users do not need to learn or
use any new API in order to handle that synchronization (i.e., those
users still rely on the original interface provided by their chosen
DLT), (3) the efficient execution of complex queries on those structured
data. Thus, DELTA reduces query times up to five orders of magnitude,
depending on the DLT and the database, compared to queries directed to
the ledger nodes.