Research Seminar in Databases and Datamining

B669: Topics in Database and Information Systems
Spring 2002/3

Faculty Involved: Dennis Groth, Ed Robertson, Jit Sengupta, Dirk Van Gucht, and Cathy Wyss
Meeting: 18:00-20:00 Monday, Lindley 115 note time change

Seminar Goal & Objectives

The goal of this seminar is exposure to and involvement in database research at IU and elsewhere.

Weekly Schedule

Date Presenters and Topic Readings
Jan. 13 Introduction, organizational session.
Jan. 20 Querying semistructred data - Jit Sengupta
Jan. 27 Database Visualizations - Dennis Groth
Feb. 3 MetaData + FISQL - Cathy Wyss
Feb. 10 Theory Behind DOCBASE - Jit Sengupta
Feb. 17 Algebra + Optimization Techniques - Jit & Sriram
Feb. 24 Visualization - Dennis Groth
Mar. 3 Visualization - Dennis Groth
Mar. 10 Selectivity Estimation - Bassem Sayrafi & Chris Giannella  
Visualization - Dennis Groth 		draft distribued by Chris (cgiannel@cs.indiana.edu)
 
Mar. 17 Spring Break
Mar. 24 DOCBASE Implementation - Sriram
Mar. 31 MetaData - Cathy Wyss
Apr. 7 Steven Wolfram lecture
Apr. 14 MetaData - Cathy Wyss
Information Theory ... XML - Dirk Van Gucht
paper from upcoming PODS 2003
Apr. 21
Apr. 28 Final Roundup

Class Enrollment and Authorization

The minimal background is B461, B561, or the equivalent. B661 is typically required. Students are expected to be ready to engage in a research project. Hopefully they will have a project, or at least a general area, already in mind.

Any of the listed faculty can authorize admission to the course.

Although the original announcement for B669 listed it as a course on Query Implementation, the only true database course during Spring 2003 is B661. Students who want to learn about databases but who have not yet taken B661 are advised to take that course.

B669 is also the weekly database seminar. Anyone who wants to attend and participate is always welcome.

Class Responsibilities

Since this is a research seminar, the central goal is of course research. For students already working on their dissertations, this is typically continuation of that work. For students just entering the PhD program, this is likely to be some initial exploration of an area. For the occasional MS student who is ready to participate in research, this is likely to be participating in an ongoing project or experiment. In each case, we will all benefit by learning about other's work and by getting feedback on our own work.

Each student will give at least two presentations: one early and one later in the semester. A student who already has an active research projects might only report on that project, while a student just beginning research should give a presentation early in the term on a research area, begin work on a topic in that area, and give a presentation on their accomplishments at the end of the term.