Exploratory Computing: What is there for the Database Researcher?
Marcello Buoncristiano, Giansalvatore Mecca, Elisa Quintarelli, Manuel Roveri, Donatello Santoro, Letizia Tanca · CINECA IRIS Institutional Research Information System (University of Basilicata) · 2015
The need for effective tools helping users to make sense of very big datasets has received a lot of attention lately. In this paper we propose a paradigm for database exploration which is in turn inspired by the exploratory computing vision [2]. We may describe exploratory computing as the step-by-step “conversation” of a user and a system that “help each other” to refine the data exploration process, ultimately gathering new knowledge that concretely fulfills the user needs. In this broad and innovative context, this paper proposes a model to concretely perform this kind of exploration over a database. The model is general enough to encompass most data models and query languages that have been proposed for data management in the last few years. At the same time, it is precise enough to provide a first formalization of the problem and reason about the research challenges posed to database researchers by this new paradigm of interaction.