Berkeley Lab Scientific Computing Seminar

Date:

Friday, September 7, 2007

Time:

1:30pm-2:30pm

Location:

Building 50A-5132

Seminar Speaker:

Catharine van Ingen
Microsoft Research
http://research.microsoft.com/~vaningen/

Title:

Observations from a Journey Toward a Generalizable Data Server Architecture for Ecological Science

Abstract:

Many ecological science collaborations are using relational databases to collect, curate and archive their measurement data. Data cube (OLAP) technology can be used in combination with a relational database to simply and efficiently compute aggregates of temporal, spatial and other data dimensions commonly used for data analysis. Over the last year, weve built a number of data cubes to support diverse ecological science goals such as carbon flux measurement and watershed studies. This talk explores the commonalities between these cubes and the differences along with some of the reasons for each. While we are hand crafting each cube today, our goal is a methodology that produces a family of cubes that can be used across a number of scientific investigations and disciplines.

Catharine van Ingen is an architect in the eScience group in Microsoft Research. Her focus is on simple data analysis and curation. Prior to joining the eScience group, she was the Windows storage architect focused on storage management. She has worked on high energy physics data acquisition, computer machine design, and modeling the Sacramento Delta. She holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from California Institute of Technology.

Sponsor of Seminar:

Deb Agarwal

Scientific Computing

Contact Esmond G. Ng EGNg@lbl.gov