Abstract
Databases today are carefully engineered: there is an expensive and deliberate design process, after which a database schema is defined; during this design process, various possible instance examples and use cases are hypothesized and carefully analyzed; finally, the schema is ready and then can be populated with data. All of this effort is a major barrier to database adoption.
In this paper, we explore the possibility of organic database creation instead of the traditional engineered approach. The idea is to let the user start storing data in a database with a schema that is just enough to cove the instances at hand. We then support efficient schema evolution as new data instances arrive. By designing the database to evolve, we can sidestep the expensive front-end cost of carefully engineering the design of the database.
The same set of issues also apply to database querying. Today, databases expect queries to be carefully specified, and to be valid with respect to the database schema. In contrast, the organic query specification model would allow users to construct queries incrementally, with little knowledge of the database. We also examine this problem in this paper.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abraham, R.: FoXQ - XQuery by forms. In: IEEE Symposium on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments (2003)
Agrawal, S., Chaudhuri, S., Das, G.: DBXplorer: A System for Keyword-Based Search over Relational Databases. In: ICDE (2002)
Agrawal, S., Chaudhuri, S., Kollar, L., Marathe, A., Narasayya, V., Syamala, M.: Database Tuning Advisor for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. In: VLDB (2004)
Aiken, A., Chen, J., Stonebraker, M., Woodruff, A.: Tioga-2: A direct manipulation database visualization environment. In: ICDE, pp. 208–217 (1996)
Amer-Yahia, S., Lakshmanan, L.V.S., Pandit, S.: FleXPath: Flexible Structure and Full-Text Querying for XML. In: SIGMOD (2004)
Androutsopoulos, I., Ritchie, G., Thanisch, P.: Natural Language Interfaces to Databases–an introduction. Journal of Language Engineering 1(1), 29–81 (1995)
Balmin, A., Hristidis, V., Papakonstantinou, Y.: ObjectRank: Authority-Based Keyword Search in Databases. In: VLDB (2004)
Bell, G., Gemmell, J.: A Digital Life (2007)
Benzi, F., Maio, D., Rizzi, S.: Visionary: A Viewpoint-based Visual Language for Querying Relational Databases. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 10(2) (1999)
Bhalotia, G., Hulgeri, A., Nakhe, C., Chakrabarti, S., Sudarshan, S.: Keyword Searching and Browsing in Databases using BANKS. In: ICDE (2002)
Biskup, J.: Achievements of Relational Database Schema Design Theory Revisited. In: Thalheim, B. (ed.) Semantics in Databases 1995. LNCS, vol. 1358, pp. 29–54. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Biskup, J.: Achievements of Relational Database Schema Design Theory Revisited. In: Thalheim, B. (ed.) Semantics in Databases 1995. LNCS, vol. 1358, pp. 29–54. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Braga, D., Campi, A., Ceri, S.: XQBE (XQuery By Example): A Visual Interface to the Standard XML Query Language. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 30(2) (2005)
Brown, A.B., Chung, L.C., Patterson, D.A.: Including the Human Factor in Dependability Benchmarks. In: DSN Workshop on Dependability Benchmarking (2002)
Butterworth, R., Blandford, A., Duke, D.: Using Formal Models to Explore Display-Based Usability Issues. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 10(5) (1999)
Carmel, D., Maarek, Y.S., Mandelbrod, M., Mass, Y., Soffer, A.: Searching XML Documents via XML Fragments. In: SIGIR (2003)
Ceaparu, I., Lazar, J., Bessiere, K., Robinson, J., Shneiderman, B.: Determining Causes and Severity of End-User Frustration. International Journal of Human Computer Interaction 17(3) (2004)
Chaudhuri, S., Weikum, G.: Rethinking Database System Architecture: Towards a Self-Tuning, RISC-style Database System. In: VLDB (2000)
Chen, Z., Li, T.: Addressing Diverse User Preferences in SQL-Query-Result Navigation. In: SIGMOD (2007)
Choobineh, J., Mannino, M.V., Tseng, V.P.: A Form-Based Approach for Database Analysis and Design. CACM 35(2) (1992)
Cohen, S., Kanza, Y., Kogan, Y., Sagiv, Y., Nutt, W., Serebrenik, A.: EquiX–A Search and Query Language for XML. JASIST 53(6) (2002)
Cohen, S., Mamou, J., Kanza, Y., Sagiv, Y.: XSEarch: A Semantic Search Engine for XML. In: VLDB (2003)
Date, C.J.: Database Usability. In: SIGMOD. ACM Press, New York (1983)
Dong, X., Halevy, A.: A Platform for Personal Information Management and Integration. In: CIDR (2005)
Doubleday, A., Ryan, M., Springett, M., Sutcliffe, A.: A Comparison of Usability Techniques for Evaluating Design. In: DIS (1997)
Embley, D.W.: NFQL: The Natural Forms Query Language. ACM Trans. Database Syst. (1989)
Erwig, M.: A Visual Language for XML. In: IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages,
Goldman, R., Shivakumar, N., Venkatasubramanian, S., Garcia-Molina, H.: Proximity Search in Databases. In: VLDB (1998)
Guo, L., Shao, F., Botev, C., Shanmugasundaram, J.: XRANK: Ranked Keyword Search over XML Documents. In: SIGMOD (2003)
Hanrahan, P.: VizQL: A Language for Query, Analysis and Visualization. In: SIGMOD, pp. 721–721 (2006)
Hanrahan, P.: Vizql: a language for query, analysis and visualization. In: SIGMOD, p. 721 (2006)
Hara, C., Davidson, S.: Reasoning about nested functional dependencies. In: PODS (1999)
Haveliwala, T.: Topic-Sensitive PageRank: A Context-Sensitive Ranking Algorithm for Web Search. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 15(4), 784–796 (2003)
Hristidis, V., Papakonstantinou, Y.: DISCOVER: Keyword Search in Relational Databases. In: VLDB (2002)
Ioannidis, Y.E., Viglas, S.: Conversational Querying. Inf. Syst. 31(1), 33–56 (2006)
Jagadish, H.V., Chapman, A., Elkiss, A., Jayapandian, M., Li, Y., Nandi, A., Yu, C.: Making database systems usable. In: SIGMOD (2007)
Jankun-Kelly, T.J., Ma, K.-L.: A spreadsheet interface for visualization exploration. In: IEEE Visualization, pp. 69–76 (2000)
Jayapandian, M., Jagadish, H.V.: Automating the Design and Construction of Query Forms. In: ICDE (2006)
Jayapandian, M., Jagadish, H.V.: Automated creation of a forms-based database query interface. In: VLDB (2008)
Jayapandian, M., Jagadish, H.V.: Expressive query specification through form customization. In: EDBT (2008)
Jayram, T.S., Krishnamurthy, R., Raghavan, S., Vaithyanathan, S., Zhu, H.: Avatar Information Extraction System. IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 29(1), 40–48 (2006)
Jeh, G., Widom, J.: Scaling Personalized Web Search. In: WWW, pp. 271–279 (2003)
Kandel, S., Paepcke, A., Theobald, M., Garcia-Molina, H.: The photospread query language. Technical report, Stanford Univ. (2007)
Kelley, J.F.: An Iterative Design Methodology for User-Friendly Natural Language Office Information Applications. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 2(1) (1984)
Koutrika, G., Ioannidis, Y.: Personalization of Queries in Database Systems. In: ICDE (2004)
Kuntz, M., Melchert, R.: Pasta-3’s graphical query language: Direct manipulation, cooperative queries, full expressive power. In: VLDB, pp. 97–105 (1989)
Li, Y., Yang, H., Jagadish, H.V.: NaLIX: A Generic Natural Language Search Environment for XML Data. ACM Transactions on Database Systems-TODS 32(4) (2007)
Li, Y., Yu, C., Jagadish, H.V.: Enabling Schema-Free XQuery with Meaningful Query Focus. VLDB Journal (in press)
Lightstone, S., Lohman, G.M., Haas, P.J., et al.: Making DB2 Products Self-Managing: Strategies and Experiences. IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 29(3), 16–23 (2006)
Liu, B., Jagadish, H.V.: A spreadsheet algebra for a direct data manipulation query interface. In: ICDE (2009)
Madhavan, J., Jeffery, S., Cohen, S., Dong, X., Ko, D., Yu, C., Halevy, A.: Web-scale Data Integration: You Can Only Afford to Pay As You Go. In: CIDR (2007)
Markl, V., Lohman, G.M., Raman, V.: LEO: An Autonomic Query Optimizer for DB2. IBM Systems Journal 42(1), 98–106 (2003)
Mitchell, K., Kennedy, J.: DRIVE: An Environment for the Organized Construction of User-Interfaces to Databases. In: Interfaces to Databases, IDS-3 (1996)
Mukhopadhyay, P., Papakonstantinou, Y.: Mixing Querying and Navigation in MIX. In: ICDE (2002)
Murray, N., Paton, N., Goble, C.: Kaleidoquery: A Visual Query Language for Object Databases. In: Advanced Visual Interfaces (1998)
Nandi, A., Jagadish, H.V.: Assisted Querying using Instant-Response Interfaces. In: SIGMOD (2007)
Nandi, A., Jagadish, H.V.: Qunits: queried units for database search. In: CIDR (2009)
Olston, C., Woodruff, A., Aiken, A., Chu, M., Ercegovac, V., Lin, M., Spalding, M., Stonebraker, M.: Datasplash. In: SIGMOD, pp. 550–552 (1998)
Papadomanolakis, E., Ailamaki, A.: Autopart: Automating schema design for large scientific databases using data partitioning. In: SSDBM (2004)
Papakonstantinou, Y., Petropoulos, M., Vassalos, V.: QURSED: Querying and Reporting Semistructured Data. In: SIGMOD (2002)
Popescu, A.-M., Etzioni, O., Kautz, H.A.: Towards a Theory of Natural Language Interfaces to Databases. In: IUI (2003)
Qian, L., LeFevre, K., Jagadish, H.V.: Crius: User-friendly database design. PVLDB 4(2), 81–92 (2010)
Raman, V., Hellerstein, J.M.: Potter’s wheel: An interactive data cleaning system. In: VLDB, pp. 381–390 (2001)
Sabin, R.E., Yap, T.K.: Integrating Information Retrieval Techniques with Traditional DB Methods in a Web-Based Database Browser. In: SAC (1998)
Sengupta, A., Dillon, A.: Query by Templates: A Generalized Approach for Visual Query Formulation for Text Dominated Databases. In: ADL (1997)
Sheneiderman, B.: Improving the Human Factors Aspect of Database Interactions. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 3(4) (1978)
Shneiderman, B.: The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation. Behaviour & Information Technology 1(3), 237–256 (1982)
Sinha, S., Bowers, K., Mamrak, S.A.: Accessing a Medical Database using WWW-Based User Interfaces. Technical report, Ohio State University (1998)
Soules, C., Shah, S., Ganger, G.R., Noble, B.D.: It’s Time to Bite the User Study Bullet. Technical report, University of Michigan (2007)
Spenke, M., Beilken, C.: A spreadsheet interface for logic programming. In: CHI, pp. 75–80 (1989)
Spenke, M., Beilken, C., Berlage, T.: Focus: The interactive table for product comparison and selection. In: UIST, pp. 41–50 (1996)
Sutcliffe, A., Ryan, M., Doubleday, A., Springett, M.: Model Mismatch Analysis: Towards a Deeper Explanation of Users’ Usability Problems. Behavior & Information Technology 19(1) (2000)
Tan, B., Peng, F.: Unsupervised query segmentation using generative language models and wikipedia. In: WWW (2008)
Wasserman, A.I.: User Software Engineering and the Design of Interactive Systems. In: ICSE. IEEE Press, Piscataway (1981)
Witkowski, A., Bellamkonda, S., Bozkaya, T., Dorman, G., Folkert, N., Gupta, A., Sheng, L., Subramanian, S.: Spreadsheets in rdbms for olap. In: SIGMOD (2003)
Wong, S.K.M., Butz, C.J., Xiang, Y.: Automated database schema design using mined data dependencies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49, 455–470 (1998)
Yu, C., Jagadish, H.V.: Querying Complex Structured Databases. In: VLDB (2007)
Yuan, W.: End-User Searching Behavior in Information Retrieval: A Longitudinal Study. JASIST 48(3) (1997)
Zloof, M.M.: Query-by-Example: the Invocation and Definition of Tables and Forms. In: VLDB (1975)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Jagadish, H.V., Nandi, A., Qian, L. (2011). Organic Databases. In: Kikuchi, S., Madaan, A., Sachdeva, S., Bhalla, S. (eds) Databases in Networked Information Systems. DNIS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7108. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25731-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25731-5_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25730-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25731-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)