Computing Reviews
Today's Issue Hot Topics Search Browse Recommended My Account Log In
Review Help
Search
Raghu Ramakrishnan speaks out on deductive databases, what lies beyond scalability, how he burned through $20M briskly, why we should reach out to policymakers, and more
Winslett M. ACM SIGMOD Record35 (2):77-85,2006.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Nov 23 2006

This interview with one of the leading researchers in the database field explores past, present, and future avenues in the database field as well as those of neighboring fields. In this respect, Ramakrishnan, now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a superb partner not only because he has been involved in both academic and business ventures, but also because he has a fresh way of thinking and articulates his thoughts clearly. The article is written in a lively style.

Topics touched on range from trivia to personal recollections, and extend to fairly sophisticated realms like thinking about the future research directions of the database community or the social responsibilities of engineers. Some of the specific topics covered include: the recent surge (or not) of deductive databases and its contribution to structured query language 3 (magic sets rewriting and incremental view maintenance); data cubes and their role beyond providing scalability (information extraction from text and social network analysis); QUIQ, the company Ramakrishnan founded at the end of the 1990s, and how he spent 20 million dollars and terminated the venture; the social responsibility of researchers (“to become more active”) in light of security and privacy issues; and his personal history (that is, how he ended up doing database research).

In summary, this article is an enjoyable personal tour of the horizon, even if you are not directly from the database or data mining community.

Reviewer:  Christoph F. Strnadl Review #: CR133619 (0712-1318)
Bookmark and Share
  Editor Recommended
Featured Reviewer
 
 
Database Management (H.2 )
 
 
General (K.6.0 )
 
 
General (A.0 )
 
Would you recommend this review?
yes
no
Other reviews under "Database Management": Date
Progressive skyline computation in database systems
Papadias D., Tao Y., Fu G., Seeger B. ACM Transactions on Database Systems 30(1): 41-82, 2005. Type: Article
Jan 24 2006
Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL 5: from novice to professional (2nd ed.)
Gilmore W., APress, LP, Berkeley, CA, 2005.  952, Type: Book (9781590595527)
Nov 30 2006
Information systems reengineering and integration
Fong J., Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 2006.  368, Type: Book (9781846283826)
Dec 13 2006
more...

E-Mail This Printer-Friendly
Send Your Comments
Contact Us
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.   Copyright 1999-2024 ThinkLoud®
Terms of Use
| Privacy Policy