Just as I was digesting Jeff Naughton's presentation at DB/IR day, a colleague at Endeca emailed me the keynote that H. V. Jagadish (University of Michigan) presented at SIGMOD '07 on making database systems usable. He enumerates the familiar pain points of today's database systems: confusing schemas, too many choices to make, unexpected--and unexplained--system behavior, and too high a cost for initial creation. He proposes "systems that reflect the user's model of the data, rather than forcing the data to fit a particular model."
As with Jeff's presentation, the main take-away here is a framework (though both he and Jeff have taken initial steps to address the problems they describe). As a practitioner, I'm most encouraged by the fact that database researchers, like information retrieval researchers, are increasingly recognizing the importance of users.
Showing posts with label Jeff Naughton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Naughton. Show all posts
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
North East DB / IR Day
Last Friday, I had the privilege to attend the Spring 2008 North East DB/IR Day, hosted by Columbia University:
Jeff characterized the traditional philosophy of the database community as guaranteeing perfect outputs is the inputs are perfect. He argues that what we need more of today are databases that expect imperfection, and try to help.
To summarize his talk:
The North East DB/IR Day brings together database and information retrieval researchers and students from both academic and research institutions in the Northeastern United States. The DB/IR Day is a semi-annual workshop that features an exciting technical program as well as informal discussion. The DB/IR Day provides a regular forum for presenting diverse viewpoints on database systems and information retrieval, addressing current topics as well as promoting information exchange among researchers.The event lived up to its promise, and I was impressed with the quality of student posters. But my favorite part of the event was the keynote by Jeff Naughton entitled "Extracting Problems for Database and IR Researchers."
Jeff characterized the traditional philosophy of the database community as guaranteeing perfect outputs is the inputs are perfect. He argues that what we need more of today are databases that expect imperfection, and try to help.
To summarize his talk:
- Provide support for "learn schema as you go."
- Develop techniques to explain inconsistency and let users reason about it.
- Expect errors, provide tools for users to understand/debug them.
- View task as helping user discover what they want in large space of potential queries.
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Showing posts with label Jeff Naughton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Naughton. Show all posts
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Database Usability
Just as I was digesting Jeff Naughton's presentation at DB/IR day, a colleague at Endeca emailed me the keynote that H. V. Jagadish (University of Michigan) presented at SIGMOD '07 on making database systems usable. He enumerates the familiar pain points of today's database systems: confusing schemas, too many choices to make, unexpected--and unexplained--system behavior, and too high a cost for initial creation. He proposes "systems that reflect the user's model of the data, rather than forcing the data to fit a particular model."
As with Jeff's presentation, the main take-away here is a framework (though both he and Jeff have taken initial steps to address the problems they describe). As a practitioner, I'm most encouraged by the fact that database researchers, like information retrieval researchers, are increasingly recognizing the importance of users.
As with Jeff's presentation, the main take-away here is a framework (though both he and Jeff have taken initial steps to address the problems they describe). As a practitioner, I'm most encouraged by the fact that database researchers, like information retrieval researchers, are increasingly recognizing the importance of users.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
North East DB / IR Day
Last Friday, I had the privilege to attend the Spring 2008 North East DB/IR Day, hosted by Columbia University:
Jeff characterized the traditional philosophy of the database community as guaranteeing perfect outputs is the inputs are perfect. He argues that what we need more of today are databases that expect imperfection, and try to help.
To summarize his talk:
The North East DB/IR Day brings together database and information retrieval researchers and students from both academic and research institutions in the Northeastern United States. The DB/IR Day is a semi-annual workshop that features an exciting technical program as well as informal discussion. The DB/IR Day provides a regular forum for presenting diverse viewpoints on database systems and information retrieval, addressing current topics as well as promoting information exchange among researchers.The event lived up to its promise, and I was impressed with the quality of student posters. But my favorite part of the event was the keynote by Jeff Naughton entitled "Extracting Problems for Database and IR Researchers."
Jeff characterized the traditional philosophy of the database community as guaranteeing perfect outputs is the inputs are perfect. He argues that what we need more of today are databases that expect imperfection, and try to help.
To summarize his talk:
- Provide support for "learn schema as you go."
- Develop techniques to explain inconsistency and let users reason about it.
- Expect errors, provide tools for users to understand/debug them.
- View task as helping user discover what they want in large space of potential queries.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Showing posts with label Jeff Naughton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Naughton. Show all posts
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Database Usability
Just as I was digesting Jeff Naughton's presentation at DB/IR day, a colleague at Endeca emailed me the keynote that H. V. Jagadish (University of Michigan) presented at SIGMOD '07 on making database systems usable. He enumerates the familiar pain points of today's database systems: confusing schemas, too many choices to make, unexpected--and unexplained--system behavior, and too high a cost for initial creation. He proposes "systems that reflect the user's model of the data, rather than forcing the data to fit a particular model."
As with Jeff's presentation, the main take-away here is a framework (though both he and Jeff have taken initial steps to address the problems they describe). As a practitioner, I'm most encouraged by the fact that database researchers, like information retrieval researchers, are increasingly recognizing the importance of users.
As with Jeff's presentation, the main take-away here is a framework (though both he and Jeff have taken initial steps to address the problems they describe). As a practitioner, I'm most encouraged by the fact that database researchers, like information retrieval researchers, are increasingly recognizing the importance of users.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
North East DB / IR Day
Last Friday, I had the privilege to attend the Spring 2008 North East DB/IR Day, hosted by Columbia University:
Jeff characterized the traditional philosophy of the database community as guaranteeing perfect outputs is the inputs are perfect. He argues that what we need more of today are databases that expect imperfection, and try to help.
To summarize his talk:
The North East DB/IR Day brings together database and information retrieval researchers and students from both academic and research institutions in the Northeastern United States. The DB/IR Day is a semi-annual workshop that features an exciting technical program as well as informal discussion. The DB/IR Day provides a regular forum for presenting diverse viewpoints on database systems and information retrieval, addressing current topics as well as promoting information exchange among researchers.The event lived up to its promise, and I was impressed with the quality of student posters. But my favorite part of the event was the keynote by Jeff Naughton entitled "Extracting Problems for Database and IR Researchers."
Jeff characterized the traditional philosophy of the database community as guaranteeing perfect outputs is the inputs are perfect. He argues that what we need more of today are databases that expect imperfection, and try to help.
To summarize his talk:
- Provide support for "learn schema as you go."
- Develop techniques to explain inconsistency and let users reason about it.
- Expect errors, provide tools for users to understand/debug them.
- View task as helping user discover what they want in large space of potential queries.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
