booklet - ER 2011

Tutorial Abstracts
Towards a theory of search queries
Jan Van den Bussche (Hasselt University, Belgium)
Date: Monday 14:00-15:30
Room: Louise 3b
Tutorial Abstracts
Jan Van den Bussche is a professor of databases and theoretical computer science at Hasselt
University, Belgium. His research is on the theory of database systems, broadly construed, and
he has recently published on topics as diverse as workflow provenance and DNA computing. He
has been the recipient of two PODS best paper awards. He obtained his PhD from the University
of Antwerp in 1993, under the supervision of Jan Paredaens. He has served as PC chair for the
International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) in 2001 and the ACM Symposium on Principles of
Database Systems in 2006, and has served from 2001 until 2011 as chair of the ICDT council. He currently
serves on the editorial boards of Information Systems, ACM Transactions on Database Theory, and Fundamenta
Informaticae.
Abstract Current information systems, such as file systems, library catalogues, websites, Semantic Web
search, dataspaces, Google Fusion Tables, offer search capabilities that are typically weaker that the standard
”first-order” SQL query capabilities expected of a fully-fledged database system. The theory of databases has
explored first-order queries (relational algebra, relational calculus) extensively, but a theory of weaker, searchlike
query mechanisms is only at its beginnings. In this tutorial we present our first steps in this direction,
based on an article we published with Fletcher, Van Gucht, and Vansummeren, in ACM TODS in 2010. We
will begin by recalling some basics of the theory of database queries, so that everyone can follow the tutorial.
Patterns of Data Modeling
Michael Blaha (Modelsoft Consulting Corp, USA)
Date: Tuesday 14:00-15:30
Room: Louise 3b
Michael Blaha has been a consultant and trainer in conceiving, architecting, modeling, designing,
and tuning databases since 1994. He has worked with dozens of organizations throughout the world.
Blaha has authored six books, six US patents, and many papers. His most recent book is ”Patterns
of Data Modeling”. He was an editor of IEEE Computer from 2000-2007 and was a member of
the IEEE-CS Publications Board from 2004-2007. Blaha received his doctorate from Washington
University in St. Louis and is an alumnus of GE Global Research.
Abstract Data modeling is one of the most difficult tasks for software development. The difficulty lies with
the need to reach beyond the literal problem by abstracting and capturing a problem’s essence. Patterns
promote abstraction by illustrating the options and trade-offs in alternative data model representations. Most
of the data patterns literature focuses on seed models. In contrast, this tutorial emphasizes true abstract
patterns that are apart from a problem domain. There are multiple aspects of pattern technology including
mathematical templates, antipatterns, archetypes, identity, and canonical models.
This tutorial quickly covers the breadth of patterns and then goes into depth on selected topics. We present
six ways for modeling trees (a mathematical template) along with examples and trade-offs. We also present
several antipatterns and show how they apply when reverse engineering the LDAP standard to recover its
underlying conceptual data model.
37