Class: Tuesday, Thursdays, 10:30 -- 11:45 GRIS 170 Campus Map
Instructor: Sunil Prabhakar
Email: sunil@cs.purdue.edu
Office: Math 418
Phone: (765) 494 6008

Database technology is one of the major contributions of computer science to the commercial world. The relational database model has been extremely successful in satisfying the requirements of most applications of the past. This success can be attributed to the elegance and simplicity of the relational model, and the development of concepts such as transactions, concurrency control, recovery, SQL, indexing and distributed databases. Despite the success of databases for traditional applications such as banking, which are chiefly concerned with numeric or ASCII data, databases are facing new challenges as the domain and requirements of database applications evolve in step with the fast paced developments in computer science.

Recently database researchers have been developing solutions for emerging applications such as sensor and streaming databases. These applications are inherently different from traditional database applications due to the constant flux of data, long-running queries, and seemingly infinite size of the data. These characteristics render many of the successful solutions of earlier database systems ineffective or inefficient. Another important area of research has been the need to support privacy for the data managed by databases.

In this seminar, we will discuss the state-of-the-art solutions to some of these problems. For each problem that is studied, we will begin with an overview of the background for the problem, followed by a brief survey of the current research efforts and a detailed discussion of some of the more interesting research papers. The goal of the seminar is not only to survey and understand the existing research but also to explore new ideas that emerge from the discussions. Students will therefore be expected to lead discussions on assigned research papers or present surveys, as well as propose and conduct a small research project. Students are expected to have at least an undergraduate level familiarity with essential concepts of databases and operating systems.

Database related issues in the following areas will be covered:

• Sensor databases
• Stream databases
• Privacy support in databases
• Bio-informatics

There is no required textbook for the course. The instructor will assign reading material for each week. These will largely be research papers, product descriptions, etc. Students are welcome to suggest reading material that may be of interest to the class. The instructor or an assigned student(s) will lead the discussion each week. Everyone is expected to read the papers and participate in the discussion. A suggested reading list is available.

The grade will be based upon class participation, presentation and a small term project. A set of project topics will be suggested, however, students are free to choose other topics with the instructor's consent. Student presentations will complement lectures given by the instructor. The length and frequency of student presentations may vary according to class size.