Scientific Data Bases at Scale and SciDB

<!--HTML--><p> <strong>Abstract:</strong></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"> As a general rule, scientists have shunned relational data management systems (RDBMS), choosing instead to &ldquo;roll their own&rdquo; on top of file system technology.&nbsp; We first discuss why file systems are a poor choice for science data storage, especially as data volumes become large and scalability becomes important.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> Then, we continue with the reasons why RDBMSs work poorly on most science applications.&nbsp; These include a data model &ldquo;impedance mismatch&rdquo; and missing features. We discuss array DBMSs, and why they are a much better choice for science applications, and use SciDB as an exemplar of this new class of DBMSs.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> Most science applications require a mix of data management and complex analytics.&nbsp; In most cases, the analytics entail a sequence of linear algebra computations.&nbsp; We discuss the possible ways of integrating a DBMS with statistical calculations, and conclude with the mechanism being used by SciDB.</p> <p> <br /> &nbsp;</p> <p> <strong>Bio:</strong></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"> Dr. Stonebraker has been a pioneer of data base research and technology for more than a quarter of a century.&nbsp; He was the main architect of the INGRES relational DBMS, and the object-relational DBMS, POSTGRES.&nbsp; These prototypes were developed at the University of California at Berkeley where Stonebraker was a Professor of Computer Science for twenty five years.&nbsp; More recently at M.I.T. he was a co-architect of the Aurora/Borealis stream processing engine, the C-Store column-oriented DBMS, and the H-Store transaction processing engine.&nbsp;&nbsp; Currently, he is working on science-oriented DBMSs, OLTP DBMSs, and scalable data curation.&nbsp; He is the founder of five venture-capital backed startups, which commercialized his prototypes.&nbsp; Presently he serves as Chief Technology Officer of VoltDB and Paradigm4, Inc.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> Professor Stonebraker is the author of scores of research papers on data base technology, operating systems and the architecture of system software services.&nbsp; He was awarded the ACM System Software Award in 1992, for his work on INGRES.&nbsp; Additionally, he was awarded the first annual Innovation award by the ACM SIGMOD special interest group in 1994, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997.&nbsp; He was awarded the IEEE John Von Neumann award in 2005, and is presently an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at M.I.T, where he is co-director of the new Intel Science and Technology Center focused on big data.</p> <p> <br /> &nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"> &nbsp;</p>