VOLUME HOLOGRAPHIC STORAGE FOR LARGE RELATIONAL DATABASES

Computing applications continue to put increasing demands on secondary storage systems. These demands can be met by optical solutions such a s volume holographic memories, which promise to provide the high stora ge capacities and data rates required by many input/output intensive a pplications. Holographic memories appear especially suited for large d atabase storage because of their page format and fast associative reca ll ability. A volume holographic database system that is being impleme nted in our laboratory is presented. The discussion includes a descrip tion of the optical system as well as the development and analysis of an error-correcting code suitable for the application. Also presented are experimental results in which good associative addressability is a chieved for search arguments as small as 1/30 of a page. (C) 1996 Soci ety of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.