Title:

Database Exploration: Problems and Opportunities

Abstract:

The need for effective tools helping users to make sense of very big datasets has received a lot of attention lately. We discuss a paradigm for database exploration which is in turn inspired by the exploratory computing vision. We may describe exploratory computing as the step-by-step conversation of a user and a system that help each other to refine the data exploration process, ultimately gathering new knowledge that concretely fulfills the user needs. In this broad and innovative context, we propose a model to concretely perform this kind of exploration over a database. The model is general enough to encompass most data models and query languages that have been proposed for data management in the last few years. At the same time, it is precise enough to provide a first formalization of the problem and reason about the research challenges posed to database researchers by this new paradigm of interaction.

Bio:

Giansalvatore Mecca is full professor at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics of the University of Basilicata. He graduated with honors in Computer Engineering from University di Roma La Sapienza and received his PhD, also from La Sapienza. He is with University della Basilicata from 1995, first as a research associate and then as an associate professor. He coordinates the teaching and research activities of the school of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, and serves as Deputy Rector for research. His research interests include database exploration, data quality, data integration and data exchange. He has also worked on information extraction, cooperative database systems, string databases, deductive databases, and object-oriented databases.

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