| Time: | 12:30 pm on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013 |
| Place: | Savery 409 |
Abstract:
Interviews and focus groups with University of Washington researchers
revealed a need across disciplines for simple and scalable data
management. In response, the UW eScience Institute has developed
SQLShare, a software-as-a-service platform for lightweight data
manipulation, query, and sharing. SQLShare is designed to significantly
reduce the effort required to build, maintain, and exploit a database
management system by reducing operation to a simple Upload-Query-Share
workflow: researchers upload data directly through a browser, then write
queries to clean and process their data, link it with other sources, and
analyze the results process, restructure, and analyze the results, then
share their queries with other users for collaboration and publication
purposes. Even researchers with zero programming experience are able to
self-train in using SQL and SQLShare with only a few examples to get
them started. The architecture is entirely cloud-based to ease
dministration, with components running on both Microsoft Azure and
Amazon Web Services. SQLShare supports hundreds of users on and off the
UW campus, and is available for public use. SQLShare is also positioned
as an exemplar in technology transfer: it was conceived and funded as a
research project, co-developed by central IT and Computer Science
researchers, and support is in the process of being incorporated into
UW's suite of permanent campus services.
In this talk, I'll present our work on SQLShare and describe our roadmap
for the future.
Biography:
Dr. Howe is the Director of Research in Scalable Data Analytics at the
University of
Washington eScience Institute and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in
the Computer Science & Engineering Department, where he studies
scientific databases, data-intensive scalable computing, and visual
analytics. Howe has received two Jim Gray Seed Grant awards from
Microsoft Research for work on managing environmental data, some paper
awards for work in data-intensive computing for science, and has written
three book chapters in the area. Howe serves on the program and
organizing committees for a number of conferences in the area of
databases and scientific data management, and serves on advisory boards
for multiple companies in the area of scientific data management. He
holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Portland State University and a
Bachelor's degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering from
Georgia Tech.