38149093
Database Research: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way? - Panel Abstract
The benefits to interdisciplinary research — and the shortcomings of a world that is deconstructed and "understood" primarily by specialization — have been apparent for several decades. Over the past several years in particular, interdisciplinarity has become the darling of the research community, synonymous with all things modern and creative and progressive about science. Leading scientists and bureaucrats state unequivocally that it is the challenges and stimulation of struggling to exchange ideas with people from other disciplines that will lead to major scientific breakthroughs and increase our knowledge of the natural world. Even more critically, experts believe interdisciplinary research properly conducted can move beyond the bounds of discovery, increasing the explanatory power, immediate relevance, and practical application of research to complex, real-world problems. But neither the popularity nor the necessity of interdisciplinary research is reflected in the reality of the situation today: Shockingly few researchers or institutions have meaningful experience with its actual practice. The reason that such a paradox exists is clear: the practice of interdisciplinarity is difficult and fraught with roadblocks, particularly for researchers who have been raised — and who continue to participate — in the tradition of disciplinarity and departmentalism. Not incidentally, no meaningful metrics and little empirical data are available today to gauge interdisciplinary methods. Based on what data do exist, this paper makes explicit what has worked and what has not for the practice of interdisciplinary research; the assumptions made about its practice; extant organizational and psychological factors which lead to success or failure; and some recent and/or notable examples of these successes and failures. Roadblocks explored include the strong institutional bias against interdisciplinarity at most universities; the differences in defining and achieving success for an interdisciplinary vs. a disciplinary endeavor; achieving consensus on a common problem or topic for study; establishing common understanding; access to cross-disciplinary data and publications; competition and the "geopolitics" of knowledge; the willingness to trust others outside of the home disciplines; publication requirements; and a commitment to shared resources and funding. The Macarthur Research Network model for collaborative research is discussed as a prototype of an existing interdisciplinary program which successfully addresses many of these barriers, albeit in a narrow subject area. The paper ends by exploring at length the Hybrid Vigor Institute's proposal for sidestepping these roadblocks which allows researchers to choose from various levels of participation — to lead, follow and/or simply observe — and establishing both …
208948503
Third-Generation Database System Manifesto - The Committee for Advanced DBMS Function.
3204824
Designing a multi-petabyte database for LSST
The 3.2 giga-pixel LSST camera will produce approximately half a petabyte of archive images every month. These data need to be reduced in under a minute to produce real-time transient alerts, and then added to the cumulative catalog for further analysis. The catalog is expected to grow about three hundred terabytes per year. The data volume, the real-time transient alerting requirements of the LSST, and its spatio-temporal aspects require innovative techniques to build an efficient data access system at reasonable cost. As currently envisioned, the system will rely on a database for catalogs and metadata. Several database systems are being evaluated to understand how they perform at these data rates, data volumes, and access patterns. This paper describes the LSST requirements, the challenges they impose, the data access philosophy, results to date from evaluating available database technologies against LSST requirements, and the proposed database architecture to meet the data challenges.
33551622
The Theory of Sequential Relations
Suppose that one has some system with inputs drawn from a set Z* which produces outputs in some set Lx*. The system is assumed to have sonm state set S. Suppose that all possible experiments are run on the system ill the sense that we can tabulate a relation R of all inpuVoutput pairs which the system can produce. (We will vary the starting state.) A problem of some importance in systems theory (Zadeh and Desoer, 1963) is to synthesize a system which has as its relation R where R has been "given" in advance. In this paper, we study sequential relations which are the relations which arise in this manner when the system is a finite sequential machine. Our main results include synthesis procedures for constructing the sequential machine when the relation is "reasonably given." Also several characterizations of sequential relations are given as well as connections with other families of relations studied in automata theory. This study was stimulated by a lecture given by Professor 5i. A. Aizermann in July 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Aizermann described a method for the synthesis of sequential machines by a "question-answer" procedure. Since the technical details of the method were omitted, we derived a method which satisfied the general characteristics mentioncd by Professor Aizernmnn. Recently, the original algorithm has become available (see Tal, 1964). I t turns out that the two methods have very little in common. Our method is • 7, presented as an appendix to this ]oa~dr. , Our method synthesizes a sequential function f by constructing the minimal sequential machine which computes f; this machine has a dis-
40830661
Greetings from a Filesystem User
215936012
Evolution of Data Management
Society has made great strides in capturing, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data. These tasks are generically called data management, and this article sketches its evolution through ...
13482322
Triumphs, Sins, and Challenges of Database Benchmarking
10432009
Increasing the Effectiveness of OS Research
41817845
Why TP-Lite will Dominate the TP Market
40167878
Why do Computer Stop and What Can be About it?