Berlin Brandenburg Information Systems Colloquium

Paul Hofmann, VP SAP Research, Palo Alto, CA

"Cloud Computing and the Real World of Business Applications"

Abstract:

The emerging cloud computing seems to become one of the mainstream of
underlying infrastructure supporting business IT operations. It presents
new business opportunities as well as technical challenges not only for
new Web applications but also for traditional business applications like
ERP. In this talk, we will discuss what is needed to run enterprise
applications in a cloud computing environment. We will talk about road
blocks of cloud computing for biz applications. We will show there is
no simple one size fits all solution. We will highlight the challenges
on the enterprise software stack for on-demand operations.

Bio:

Paul is VP at SAP Research, SAP Labs Palo Alto. He was Senior Plant
Manager at BASF's Catalysts Global Business Unit before joining
SAP in 2001 as Director Global Strategic SCM Initiative EMEA.
He was a member of faculty at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL,
USA, Technical University of Munich, Germany and Technical University
Darmstadt, Germany. Paul studied Chemistry and Physics at the
University of Vienna and received his PhD in Physics from the
Technical University of Darmstadt.

Hanan Samet, Ph.D., Professor at University of Maryland

"SORTING IN SPACE"

Abstract:

The representation of spatial data is an important issue in computer graphics, computer vision, geographic information systems, and robotics.
A wide number of representations is currently in use. Recently, there has been much interest in hierarchical data structures such as quadtrees, octrees, R-trees, etc. The key advantage of these representations is that they provide a way to index into space. In fact, they are little
more than multidimensional sorts. They are compact and depending on the nature of the spatial data they save space as well as time and also facilitate operations such as search. In this talk we give a brief overview of hierarchical spatial data structures and related research results. In addition we demonstrate the SAND Browser (found at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~brabec/sandjava) and the VASCO JAVA applet which illustrate these methods (found at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hjs/quadtree/index.html).

* Currently a Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Walton Fellow at he Centre for Geocomputation at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth (NUIM).

Bio:

Hanan Samet received the B.S. degree in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the M.S. Degree in operations research and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Stanford University, Stanford, CA. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and IAPR (International Association for Pattern Recognition), and was also elected to the ACM Council in 1989-1991 where he served as the Capital Region Representative. He is the recipient of the 2009
UCGIS Research Award. He is currently a Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Walton Fellow at the Centre for Geocomputation at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth (NUIM).

In 1975 he joined the Computer Science Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is now a Professor.
He is a member of the Computer Vision Laboratory of the Center for Automation Research and also has an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.
At the Computer Vision Laboratory he leads a number of research projects on the use of hierarchical data structures for geographic information systems.
His research group has developed the QUILT system which is a GIS based on hierarchical spatial data structures such as quadtrees and octrees, the SAND system which integrates spatial and non-spatial data, the SAND Browser (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~brabec/sandjava) which enables
browsing through a spatial database using a graphical user interface the VASCO spatial indexing applet (found at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hjs/quadtree/index.html), and a symbolic image
database system (found at http://franang.umiacs.umd.edu:1603/index.html).
He is the founding chair of the ACM SIG on Spatial Information (SIGSPATIAL). He has served as the co-general chair of the 2007 and 2008 ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference on Geographic Information Systems (ACM GIS).

His research interests include data structures, computer graphics, geographic information systems, computer vision, robotics, and database management systems, and is the author of over 300 publications on these topics. He is the author of the recent book titled "Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures" (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hjs/multidimensional-book-flyer.pdf) published by Morgan-Kaufmann, an imprint of Elsevier, in 2006, an award winner in the 2006 best book in Computer and Information Science competition of the Professional and Scholarly Publishers (PSP) Group of the American
Publishers Association (AAP), and of the first two books on spatial data structures titled "Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures", and "Applications of Spatial Data Structures: Computer Graphics, Image Processing, and GIS", both published by Addison-Wesley in 1990. was the co-general chair of the 15th ACM International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS'07) and the 16th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in
Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS'08). He is the founding chair of ACM SIGSPATIAL, and received best paper awards in the 2008 SIGMOD Conference, the 2008 SIGSPATIAL ACMGIS'08 Conference, and the 2007 Computers & Graphics Journal. His paper at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) was selected as one of the best papers for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

Berni Schiefer, Distinguished Engineer, Performance, Benchmarking, Solutions Development IBM Toronto Labs, Ontario, Canada

"Information Management and System/Storage Technology
Evolution or Revolution"

Abstract:
The role and design of systems responsible for the management of
information in the enterprise is changing. The kind of information
that is being managed is changing as is the way the information is
analyzed and made available to users in the enterprise. At the same
time system and processor technology is undergoing what some
consider a fundamental shift as processor designers grapple with
the power/heat issues associated with ever higher frequencies.
In this talk we will review the forces that are influencing both
the software and the hardware systems, with some focus on DB2.

Bio:
Berni Schiefer is a DB2 Distinguished Engineer at IBM. He has
responsibility for DB2 performance benchmarking and solutions
development, including the BCU. He joined the IBM Toronto Lab
in 1985 and has worked on SQL/DS and the Starburst experimental
relational database at the IBM Almaden Research Lab, prior to
working on DB2. His current focus is on introducing advanced
technology into DB2 with particular emphasis on processors,
performance, XML, Linux, Virtualization and Autonomics.

Dennis Shasha, Professor at New York University (NYU), USA

"Database Outsourcing with Access Privacy"

(Joint Work with Radu Sion and Peter Williams)

Abstract:

This talk describes a new framework for outsourcing the transaction
processing backend of a multi-client database application to an
untrusted service provider.
Providers learn nothing about transactions (except their size and timing),
thus achieving read and write access pattern privacy. This
creates a novel class of secure database outsourcing models.

Bio:

Dennis Shasha is a professor of computer science at the
Courant Institute of New York University where he works with
biologists on pattern discovery for microarrays, combinatorial design,
network inference, and protein docking; with physicists, musicians,
and financial people on algorithms for time series; and on database
applications in untrusted environments. Other areas of interest include
database tuning as well as tree and graph matching.

Because he likes to type, he has written six books of puzzles about
a mathematical detective, a biography about great computer scientists,
and technical books about database tuning, biological pattern
recognition, time series, and statistics.
He has co-authored over sixty journal papers, seventy conference
papers, and fifteen patents. For fun, he writes the puzzle column
for Scientific American.

Dennis Shasha
Professor at New York University (NYU)

Prof. Dr. Catriel Beeri, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Querying and Monitoring Business Processes
by Catriel Beeri , The Hebrew University

(Joint work with T. Milo, A. Eyal, and a group of students from Tel Aviv university)

Abstract:
Business processes (BPs) are the basis for the activities of most large and medium size companies, allowing them to streamline and automate many of their routine activities. BPEL is (for now) the last in a sequence of standards intended to promote the use of business processes, and to develop tools that support such use. Since working directly with BPEL specifications is complex, common tools allow to design BPEL processes visually. The designs are then automatically converted to process code, which can execute on a BP server.

The existence of many BP specifications calls for tools that will allow to discover facts about their structure and flow. Similarly, tools are needed to monitor the execution of these BPs, to discover improper use, or to examine the efficiency and responsiveness of sub-systems.

In the talk I will discuss two tools that we have developed in the last few years, for querying BPs, and for monitoring them. Both tools are based on a common model of BPs as nested graphs, and on the idea that query design should be as easy as process design, hence should use a visual front end. They also share a common core of query primitives. The talk will describe the process and query model, the query notation, some of the underlying formal work, and the implementations of the two tools.

Prof. Catriel Beeri.
The Hebrew University

Laura Haas, PhD Distinguished Engineer and Director, Computer Science Almaden Research Center

"Beauty and the Beast: The Theory and Practice of Information Integration"

Abstract:
Information integration is becoming a critical problem for businesses
and individuals alike. Data volumes are sky-rocketing, and new sources
and types of information are proliferating. This talk briefly reviews
some of the key research accomplishments in information integration
(theory and systems), then describes the current state-of-the-art in
commercial practice, and the challenges (still) faced by CIOs and
application developers. One critical challenge is choosing the right
combination of tools and technologies to do the integration.
Although each has been studied separately, we lack a unified (and
certainly, a unifying) understanding of these various approaches to
integration. Experience with a variety of integration projects
suggests that we need a broader framework, perhaps even a theory,
which explicitly takes into account requirements on the result of the
integration, and considers the entire end-to-end integration process.

Bio:
Laura Haas is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director of Computer
Science at IBM?s Almaden Research Center. She also leads research in
information software across IBM?s eight worldwide research labs. From
2001-2005, she led the Information Integration Solutions architecture and
development teams in IBM's Software Group. Previously, Dr. Haas was a
research staff member and manager at Almaden. She is best known for her
work on the Starburst query processor (from which DB2 LUW was developed),
on Garlic, a system which allowed integration of heterogeneous data
sources, and on Clio, the first semi-automatic tool for heterogeneous
schema mapping. She has received several IBM awards for Outstanding
Technical Achievement, and an IBM Corporate Award for her work on
information integration technology. Dr. Haas is Vice President of the
VLDB Board of Trustees, a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, an ACM
Fellow, and a member of the board of the Computing Research Association.

Laura Haas, PhD
Distinguished Engineer and Director, Computer Science
Almaden Research Center
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs

Peter Haas, Research Staff Member IBM Almaden Research Center

"Some Tools and Techniques for Managing Uncertain Data"

Abstract:
There is an increasing need for tools that facilitate business
decisionmaking in the face of uncertain data. The problem of data
uncertainty is becoming acute, due to data integration, automated
information extraction, data anonymization for privacy protection,
and the growing importance of RFID and sensor data. In this talk we
give an overview of some of our recent work on uncertainty management.
We first describe the MCDB relational database system, which uses a
Monte Carlo approach to query uncertain data. This system can handle
complicated real-world queries and data, and has an extensible and
flexible uncertainty model, encapsulated via user-defined "value
generation" (VG) functions. MCDB also allows sophisticated,
data-intensive stochastic modeling and prediction to be performed
close to the data. We then describe MC3, a system that extends the
MCDB approach to a Hadoop-based cluster-computing platform, enabling
robust, scalable, and highly parallel execution of MCDB-style Monte
Carlo computations on commodity hardware. MC3, which operates on JSON
data, also relaxes MCDB's requirement of a strict relational schema.
Finally, we describe a principled method, based on maximum-entropy
ideas, to associate probabilities with annotations in a rule-based
information extraction system. Such probabilities can be exploited
for querying in systems such as MCDB and MC3.

Bio:
Peter Haas received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Stanford
University in 1986, and has been a Research Staff Member at the IBM
Almaden Research Center since 1987. He is also a Consulting Associate
Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering
at Stanford University, and Vice President/President-Elect of the
Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS)
Simulation Society. He is an Area Editor for ACM TOMACS, and an
Associate Editor for VLDB JOURNAL and OPERATIONS RESEARCH.
He has received a number of awards, including the 2007 SIGMOD
Test-of-Time Award, for his work on sampling-based exploration of
massivedatabases, automated relationship discovery in databases,
query optimization methods, and autonomic computing. He helped
develop the SQL standards for database sampling and statistical
regression functions, and many of his techniques have been
incorporated into IBM's DB2 database products. He has received
numerous IBM Invention Achievement Awards for patents filed.
He has also remained active in the area of techniques for modelling
and simulation of discrete-event stochastic systems, and his monograph
on stochastic Petri nets received the 2003 Outstanding Publication
Award from the INFORMS College on Simulation.

Peter J. Haas, Research Staff Member
IBM Almaden Research Center K55/B1
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/peterh