Distributed Query Processing on the Web N. Gupta, J. Haritsa, and M. Ramanath   View Paper (PDF)   Return to Internet, Performance, and Systems Management Abstract Current Web querying systems are based on a "data shipping" mode wherein data is downloaded from remote sites to the user-site, queries are processed locally against these documents, and then further data is downloaded from the network based on these results. A data shipping approach suffers from several disadvantages, including the transfer of large amounts of unnecessary data resulting in network congestion and poor bandwidth utilization, the client-site becoming a processing bottleneck, and extended user response times due to sequential processing. In this paper, we present an alternative "query shipping" approach wherein queries emanating from the user-site are forwarded from one site to another on the Web, the query is processed at each recipient site, and the associated results are returned to the user. Our design does not require co-ordination from any "master site", making it a truly distributed scheme. It has been implemented as part of DIASPORA (DIstributed Answering System for Processing of Remote Agents), a new Java-based Web database system that is currently operational and is undergoing field trials on our campus network. DiSC'01 Copyright ©2002 ACM Inc.