From nobody Fri Jul 19 12:55 EDT 1996
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 12:55:41 -0400 (EDT)
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Comments: I was already given 96-13 as the TR number for this report.
ContactPerson: golla-s@cs.buffalo.edu
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### Begin Citation ### Do not delete this line ###
%R 96-13
%U /u4/csstaff/milun/thesis.ps
%A Gollapudi, Sreenivas
%T A Multithreaded Client-Server Architecture for Distributed Multimedia Systems
%D July 19, 1996
%I Department of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo
%K Synchronization, Distributed Systems, Buffer Management
%X Advances in multimedia computing technologies offer new approaches to 
support on-line accesses to information from a variety of sources such 
as video clips, audio, images, and books.  A client-server distributed 
multimedia system would be a practical approach to support such 
functionalities. In this thesis, we present the design and implementation 
of a client-server distributed multimedia database environment that can be
used to support multimedia systems such as large digital libraries.  We
focus on the problems of playout management and buffer management at the
client and buffer management and admission control at the server.
Current database management system techniques are insufficient to support
the management of multimedia data owing to their time-sampled nature. The
extension of database systems to support multimedia applications thus
requires new mechanisms to ensure the synchronized presentation of
multimedia data streams. In order to flexibly and efficiently present
multimedia data streams to users, media streams must be segmented into media
objects with time constraints among these objects specified and maintained.
We investigate a framework and systematic strategies for supporting the
continuous and synchronized retrieval and presentation of multimedia data
streams at the client.
The delivery of continuous and synchronous multimedia data from a database 
server to multiple destinations over a network presents new challenges  
in the area of buffer management.  We investigate the principles of buffer
management for multimedia data presentations in object-oriented database
environments. The primary goal is to minimize the response time of
multimedia presentations while ensuring that all continuity and
synchronization requirements are satisfied.  Minimum buffering requirements
to guarantee the continuity and synchrony of the presentation of multimedia
data are first proposed.
A prefetching technique which satisfies these requirements is then 
developed.    
Server functionalities, including client scheduling, data buffering and
admission control, are investigated.
A client request can only be admitted if both the quality-of-service 
(QoS) requirements from the client and the upper bound on total 
buffer consumption at the server are maintained.