Transcript Fading Schemas

Fading Schemas…
Alon Y. Halevy
CIDR 2003 Update
• Award for Most Outrageous Idea
– Concerning my database course format.
• Implemented:
– 4 times at the University of Washington
– Around the globe…
– See SIGMOD Record, September, 2003.
• Customer reviews:
– Very high!
– “Halevy Rocks”.
DB & IR
• Important area and amazing opportunity
– Current focus: seamless querying
– Integration after the fact.
• But what about the modeling phase?
– How can we design applications that
manipulate both kinds of data?
– For domains that are inherently complex or
constantly evolving. e.g:
• Modeling web sources
• Personal information management
• Biomedical informatics
Fading Schemas
• Web: modeling the class RealEstate.
– Realize: subclasses are a messy proposition.
– Instead: describe subclasses by keywords.
• PIM: modeling property Participant.
– Realize: there are many sheds of participation.
– Instead: describe variants with keywords.
• Key point: keywords are related to the
schema constructs in important ways.