Modeling, Querying, and Visualizing Information

This seminar, listed in the schedule of classes as "Querying and Visualizing Information", is intended for graduate students who are considering doing research in areas related to databases and information systems.

Seminar Objectives
At the beginning of the semester, participants will present recent dissertation research, primarily from this department. This is intended
  • to provide continuity with previous research activities
  • to provide examples of successful dissertations
  • to encourage further questions that will lead to research topics

    • Next, participants will experiment with and report on various research/prototype software available in the database lab. The choice of software will depend upon interests that have developed along the way. Also participants will read and present other seminal papers in the area, depending upon interests of the participants.

    The final "deliverable" for the semester will be a research proposal (or at least pre-proposal).

    Topics & Dissertations
    Possible topics of interest and local dissertation research related to these topics include
    modeling
  • multimedia information, dissertation by Munish Gandhi
  • complex ER models, research by Munish Gandhi
  • reflective and metadata information, dissertation by Manoj Jain
    • querying
  • generalized quantifiers and related forms, dissertations by Vijay Sarathy and Antonio Badia
  • decision support queries, dissertation by Sudhir Rao
    • visualizing
  • multimedia structures, dissertation by Munish Gandhi
  • non-linear magnifications, ongoing work by Alan Keahey
    • Prerequisites
    There are no fixed prerequisites. However, a good database theory courses such as B661 is strongly suggested. For example, you should be able to:
  • translate into SQL, relational algebra, and relational calculus the query "get part numbers for parts supplied to all projects in London"
  • sketch the proof of the equivalence of relational algebra and relational calculus.
    • Seminar topic/project pages

    Visual Exlporation of Multidimensional Data
    by Dennis Groth and Michael Willow.

    Related research activities, here and elsewhere:

  • Nonlinear Magnifiaction, an investigation into methodologies for exploring images motivated by an earlier version of this course, by Alan Keahey
  • VizDB project at the Universitat Muenchen
  • Inst. for Visualization and Perception Research at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell
    • Web-based tools for informantion modeling and database design
    by Jorge Dardon and Chandrashekhar Shetty.
    Tentative schedule for paper presentations. Last modified: Fri Mar 14 14:25:10 EST