Database-as-a-Service for Long-Tail Science

Database technology remains underused in science, especially in the long tail  the small labs and individual researchers that collectively produce the majority of scientic output. These researchers increasingly require iterative, ad hoc analysis over ad hoc databases but cannot individually invest in the computational and intellectual infrastructure required for state-of-the-art solutions. We describe a new delivery vector for database technology called SQLShare that de-emphasizes pre-dened schemas and focuses on ad hoc integration, query, sharing, and visualization. To empower non-experts to write complex queries, we generate automatic example queries directly from the data and explore limited English hints to aaugment the process. We integrate iterative, ad hoc, collaborative visualization through a web-based service called VizDeck that uses automatic visualization techniques combined with a card game metaphor to allow creation of interactive visual dashboards in seconds with ze...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: SSDBM
• Authors: Bill Howe, Garrett Cole, Emad Souroush, Paraschos Koutris, Alicia Key, Nodira Khoussainova, Leilani Battle
• Keywords: Collaborative Visualization, Database, Pilot Deployment, Relational Database Technology, SSDBM 2011