The charter of the Microsoft Research Database Group is to increase the usefulness of database systems to users by creating, extending, and applying database technology. To that end, we consult with the database product groups at Microsoft and have initiated three exploratory research projects. We are located in Redmond, Washington, which is in the greater Seattle area.
Projects
Deuteronomy
Re-architecting Databases:Traditionally, a DBMS kernel has recovery, concurrency control and access method code tightly bound together. We factor the kernel into a transactional component (TC) that knows about transactions and their “logical” concurrency control and undo/redo recovery, and a data component (DC) that knows about the access methods and supports a record oriented interface with atomic operations. The interaction of the components is governed by a contract or covenant. David Lomet worksonthis project.
Model Management
The long term goal is to make database systems easier to use for model-driven applications, such as design tools, message translators, and database translators. The project is currently focusing on algorithms for matching, merging, and generating models.Phil Bernstein and James Terwilliger work on the project. Recent work has been on object-to-relational mapping for the ADO.NET Entity Framework, XML to relational mapping, and schema matching tools, much of it with Sergey Melnik (now at Google).
CEDR
The goal of the CEDR project is to develop the technology of data stream management systems (DSMSs). An important aspect is to permit declarative, SQL-like specification of queries deployed on steams, in which the event stream data can be queried directly without this data first being stored in a conventional database system. Jonathan Goldstein and Badrish Chandramouli work on the CEDR project.
QP Recycler
The goal of this project is to speed up processing of complex SQL queries by recognizing and exploiting commonalities within and among queries. One focus is on semantic caching, that is, caching intermediate or final query results and reusing them to compute later queries faster. A second focus is on exploiting materialized views for middle tier caching. Paul Larson and Jonathan Goldstein have worked on the QP Recycler project.
Immortal DB - Transaction Time Database
The Immortal DB provides the infrastructure for saving and indexing all prior states of a database. Foundational work for this effort hasbeen published on indexing versions, and on choosing timestamps. We have built a prototype system that embeds this functionality into SQL Server. Timestamping, version compression, and auditting arepart of the new Immortal DBtechnology. David Lomet and Roger Barga have worked on this project.
Phoenix
The long term goal is to improve application availability and error handling robustness. Initially, the project is focusing on exploiting database recovery techniques for enabling applications to survive system crashes. Two prototype systems have been built. Phoenix/ODBC provides persistent database sessions across database system failures. Phoenix/App provides persistent middle-tier applications across application server failures. David Lomet and Roger Barga have worked on the Phoenix project.
Recent Papers
- Barga, R., Chen, S. and Lomet, D. Improving Logging and Recovery Performance in Phoenix/App. ICDE Conference, Boston, MA (March 2004) 486-497 Word, .23MB
- Barga, R., Lomet, D., Shegalov, G., and Weikum, G. Recovery Guarantees for Internet Applications. ACM Trans. on Internet Technology (2004) 289-328
- Bernstein, Philip A. and Laura M. Haas: Information integration in the enterprise. Commun. ACM 51(9): 72-79 (2008)
- Hongfei Guo, Per-Ake Larson , Raghu Ramakrishnan, Jonathan Goldstein, Relaxed Currency and Consistency: How to Say "Good Enough" in SQL. SIGMOD Conference Paris, France (June 2004) 815-826
- Hongfei Guo, Per-Ake Larson , Raghu Ramakrishnan, Jonathan Goldstein, Support for Relaxed Currency and Consistency Constraints in MTCache. SIGMOD Conference Paris, France (June 2004) 937-938
- Per-Ake Larson, Jonathan Goldstein, Jingren Zhou, MTCache: Transparent Mid-Tier Database Caching in SQL Server. ICDE Conference Boston, MA (March 2004) 177-189
- Lomet, D.Robust Web Services via Interaction Contracts. VLDB Workshop on Technologies for E-Services (TES-04) Toronto, Canada (August 2004) 1-14 pdf, .09MB
- Lomet, D.Simple, Robust and Highly Concurrent B-trees with Node Deletion. ICDE Conference, Boston, MA (March 2004) 18-28 Word, .15MB
- Melnik, Sergey, Atul Adya, and Philip A Bernstein: Compiling mappings to bridge applications and databases. SIGMOD Conference 2007: 461-472
- Amira Rahal, Qiang Zhu, Per-ke Larson, Evolutionary Techniques for Updating Query Cost Models in a Dynamic Multidatabase Environment, VLDB Journal 13,2 (May 2004) 162-176
- Salzberg, B., Jiang, L., Lomet, D., Barrena, M., Shan, J., and Kanoulas, E. A Framework for Access Methods for Versioned Data. EDBT Conference, Heraklion, Greece (March 2004) 730-747 pdf, .237MB
Ph.D. Theses
- Jonathan Goldstein: Improved Query Processing and Data Representation Techniques, Ph.d. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 1999.
Professional Activities
We actively participate in the database research community. Current activities include the following Conferences activities, and Editorships and Board Memberships:
Conferences
- SIGMOD 2005
International Conference on Management of Data (2 on program committee, 1 on industrial committee) - CIDR 2005
International Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (program committee) - VLDB 2005
Very Large Databases Conference (industrial committee chair, program committee) - SAC 2005
Internet Data Management track (program committee) - SIGMOD 2004
International Conference on Management of Data (industrial committee chair, program committee) - EDBT 2004
Conference on Extending Database Technology (2 on program committee) - VLDB 2004
Very Large Databases Conference (2 on program committee) - 2004 Dagstuhl Seminar on Atomicity in System Design and Execution
(co-organizer)
Editorships and Board Memberships
- Distributed and Parallel Databases Journal: editorial board (2 members)
- Bulletin of the IEEE TC on Data Engineering: editor-in-chief
- International Conference on Data Engineering: Steering Committee (2 members)
- Information Systems: Editorial Advisory Board
- Sigmod Anthology: 2 associate editors
- Sigmod Digital Reviews: editorial board (2 members)
- VLDB Endowment: Board of Trustees member
- Computing Research Ass'n (CRA): Treasurer, Board of Directors member
- IEEE-CS Technical Committee on Data Engineering: treasurer, publications chair
Interns
A number of interns visit theDatabase Group each summer. Our current interns are listed below:
- Ahmed Ayad, University of Wisconsin
- David DeHaan, Waterloo University
- Mohamed Mokbel, Purdue University
- Peter Mork, University of Washington
- Alan Nash, University of California, San Diego (Microsoft Fellow)
- Jing Shan, Northeastern University
A full list of our prior interns is at Database Research Interns
Visitors
Researchers
- Suad Alagic (2000-2001), University of Southern Maine
- Paolo Atzeni (2003), University of Rome 3
- Christoph Freytag (2002), Humboldt University
- Wolfgang Lehner (2004), Dresden University of Technology
- David Maier (2007), Portland State University
- Rene Miller (2001, 2002), University of Toronto
- Mohamed Mokbel (2007), University of Minnesotoa
- Elizabeth O'Neil (2001), University of Massachusetts, Boston
- Patrick O'Neil (2001), University of Massachusetts, Boston
- Lemonia Ragia (2003), University of Aachen
- Erhard Rahm (2000), University of Leipzig
- Betty Salzberg (1996, 2002), Northeastern University
- Gerhard Weikum (1997, 2000, 2001), University of Saarland
