DBMS RESEARCH
Are We On The Right Tracks?
Jim Gray
Microsoft Research
Gray@Microsoft.com
http://research.Microsoft.com/~Gray
On the Right Track? Yes & No
• Yes
– Multi-Billion dollar industry
– How can you argue with success?
• No
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The web is where the action is
Functionality over performance
Knowledge-Discovery folks starting own community
Few contributions to
• text
• time
• speech
• spatial
• image
• scientific / statistical
– Ignored (reinvented) objects, languages, OSs, Web,...
What Is Our Mission?
• Manage Data: AUTOMATICALLY
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ingest,
store,
analyze,
retrieve,
display
• Good News:
We own the patent on the byte (MOD)
• Bad News:
We do not own the patent on the algorithm.
• They are inseparable Program = Procedure + Data
It’s all about Changing Ratios
• Some things not changing much
– cost of people’s time
– speed of light
– device access times
• Some things changing a lot
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1,000x bandwidth
everyone/everything connected always.
100x storage capacity
10x processor speed
100x cheaper devices
100x less power
Kilo
Mega
Giga
Tera
Peta
Exa
Zeta
Yotta
• In 10 years things will be VERY different
103
106
109
1012
1015
1018
1021
1024
Freight Trains Coming Our Way
• XML
– It has a good chance of replacing SQL.
– They are ignoring us.
• Database Machines
– Patterson talk, CMU,…
• Knowledge discovery (not just count, sum, min,…)
• Object-Oriented (its finally happening)
• Domain-specific Databases
– Text, image, temporal, spatial, ...