In October 2013, INESC TEC’s High Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab) started working on its first European project as member of INESC TEC – the “CoherentPaaS: A Coherent and Rich PaaS with a Common Programming Model”.

The “CoherentPaaS” will guarantee a “PaaS” (“Platform as a Service”) with different databases optimised for specific tasks, data and workloads. The “CoherentPaaS” will include NoSQL and SQL databases and holistic coherence management systems to process data which will be accessed by using a common query language.

This way, the “CoherentPaaS” will make it possible to develop Big Data and Internet of Things applications that explore the performance and scalability of new management technologies, while at the same time hiding the underlying complexity in a standardised query language with holistic coherence throughout all databases, thus making it simpler to develop applications.

In practice, the results of the “CoherentPaaS” will allow app creators to use a framework that is standardised and simplified thanks to the common query language, to the holistic coherence and to the scalability guaranteed by the data management technology for the cloud. Furthermore, the “CoherentPaaS” promotes a higher efficiency as it makes it possible to use different data managers in the cloud, which are specialised in specific tasks, such as online transaction processing, analytics and complex event processing.

The project has a duration of three years and it involves teaching institutions and companies from Spain, Greece, France, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, besides Portugal. The HASLab team includes Rui Oliveira, José Orlando Pereira, Ricardo Vilaça and Miguel Matos.

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner institutions: U.Minho.