Using a Hybrid Approach to Data Management in Relational Database and Blockchain: a Case Study on The E-health Domain

Abstract

Relational Databases (RDBs) have been widely used for decades. However, new persistence technologies are emerging, such as Blockchain, which is disruptive and has relevant properties, such as immutability and no third parties. Therefore, applications that use RDB can benefit from these properties by migrating part of their data to Blockchains. This article presents the MOON, a hybrid approach to manage data in RDB and Blockchain, which receives SQL queries. A case study was performed with a real health dataset using three scenarios. The conclusion is that the MOON responds to requests correctly and provides RDB and Blockchain features. Moreover, its response time was intermediate between RDB and Blockchains.