Research Projects


This large long-term project introduces a revolutionary staged design for high-performance, evolvable DBMS that are easy to tune and maintain. We break the database system into modules and encapsulate them into self-contained stages connected to each other through queues.

With the advent of highly-parallel chip multiprocessors database system designers are called to revisit their designs. We study the performance of commercial database systems in evolving computer architectures and we believe that conventional database designs are inherently restricted in performing highly in such environments. On the other hand, the different approach taken by staged database designs makes them more suitable for high performance in the new computing landscape.


In this project we study large and demanding scientific databases, and are interested in:

  • aiding scientists with “systems” work, such as database schema, physical design, and data placement on disks (and automating all related procedures to minimize the need for human intervention)
  •  designing and developing computational support for popular scientific data structures (and especially ones not currently supported by cutting-edge database technology, such as tetrahedral meshes or protein structures)
  • understanding and aiding the logical interpretation of data (including data cleaning, validation, and schema mapping)