• Home
  • Anti Spam Policy
  • DMCA
  • Contact Us
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
Do Enjoy Life
  • Home
  • Blogger
    HSE hires food blogger and other social media experts

    HSE hires food blogger and other social media experts

    Brian Jean ‘mortally wounded’ by Notley beating comment, blogger says

    Brian Jean ‘mortally wounded’ by Notley beating comment, blogger says

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    Mommy blogger who poisoned her 5-year-old son to death with salt says she’s being bullied by inmates who dump salt all over her prison meals

    Mommy blogger who poisoned her 5-year-old son to death with salt says she’s being bullied by inmates who dump salt all over her prison meals

    Veteran Curator Nancy Spector Is Such a Feminist, Her Teenage Daughter Even Blogs About It

    Veteran Curator Nancy Spector Is Such a Feminist, Her Teenage Daughter Even Blogs About It

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    Pranjal Salecha’s Journey Of Being A Blogger

    British YouTube blogger criticised after videos showed North Korea as ‘cool and wonderful’

    British YouTube blogger criticised after videos showed North Korea as ‘cool and wonderful’

    3 Useful Tips for Using Images in Blogs

    3 Useful Tips for Using Images in Blogs

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    National Book Store collaborates with lifestyle blogger on limited edition products

  • Computer
    • Gaming
    • Mac
    • Software
    • Tips
  • Finance
  • Internet
    • Internet Tips
    • Latest Internet News
    • Seo Tips
    • WordPress
  • Life
    • Education
      Traditional Textbooks Vs. Digital

      Traditional Textbooks Vs. Digital

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      How much does it cost to take the Bar Exam in the UK?

      How much does it cost to take the Bar Exam in the UK?

      Land I gave for sports centre lying idle, says India’s 1st Olympic medalist’s son

      Chattisgarh CM Raman Singh says state will develop sports village, set-up sports authority

      Land I gave for sports centre lying idle, says India’s 1st Olympic medalist’s son

      Haryana Assembly passes Sports Council Bill, CM Manohar Lal Khattar will head the body

      What Kids Should Know by the Time They’re Done With School

      What Kids Should Know by the Time They’re Done With School

      45 single-school teachers in Punjab agri minister Tota Singh’s segment

      45 single-school teachers in Punjab agri minister Tota Singh’s segment

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      Greek Education Ministry Plans New Changes for University Entry Exams

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      Delhi hits education low with failure rate

    • Beauty
    • Health
    • Property
    • Travel n Tour
    • World News
  • Mobile
    • Android
    • Apps
    • iOS
    • Other
  • Sports
  • Tech Updates
    • Automobiles
    • Gadgets
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Blogger
    HSE hires food blogger and other social media experts

    HSE hires food blogger and other social media experts

    Brian Jean ‘mortally wounded’ by Notley beating comment, blogger says

    Brian Jean ‘mortally wounded’ by Notley beating comment, blogger says

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    Mommy blogger who poisoned her 5-year-old son to death with salt says she’s being bullied by inmates who dump salt all over her prison meals

    Mommy blogger who poisoned her 5-year-old son to death with salt says she’s being bullied by inmates who dump salt all over her prison meals

    Veteran Curator Nancy Spector Is Such a Feminist, Her Teenage Daughter Even Blogs About It

    Veteran Curator Nancy Spector Is Such a Feminist, Her Teenage Daughter Even Blogs About It

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    Pranjal Salecha’s Journey Of Being A Blogger

    British YouTube blogger criticised after videos showed North Korea as ‘cool and wonderful’

    British YouTube blogger criticised after videos showed North Korea as ‘cool and wonderful’

    3 Useful Tips for Using Images in Blogs

    3 Useful Tips for Using Images in Blogs

    Essays by Han Han, the Chinese Blogger and Media Superstar

    National Book Store collaborates with lifestyle blogger on limited edition products

  • Computer
    • Gaming
    • Mac
    • Software
    • Tips
  • Finance
  • Internet
    • Internet Tips
    • Latest Internet News
    • Seo Tips
    • WordPress
  • Life
    • Education
      Traditional Textbooks Vs. Digital

      Traditional Textbooks Vs. Digital

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      How much does it cost to take the Bar Exam in the UK?

      How much does it cost to take the Bar Exam in the UK?

      Land I gave for sports centre lying idle, says India’s 1st Olympic medalist’s son

      Chattisgarh CM Raman Singh says state will develop sports village, set-up sports authority

      Land I gave for sports centre lying idle, says India’s 1st Olympic medalist’s son

      Haryana Assembly passes Sports Council Bill, CM Manohar Lal Khattar will head the body

      What Kids Should Know by the Time They’re Done With School

      What Kids Should Know by the Time They’re Done With School

      45 single-school teachers in Punjab agri minister Tota Singh’s segment

      45 single-school teachers in Punjab agri minister Tota Singh’s segment

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      Greek Education Ministry Plans New Changes for University Entry Exams

      Confusion Over Purpose of U.S. Education System

      Delhi hits education low with failure rate

    • Beauty
    • Health
    • Property
    • Travel n Tour
    • World News
  • Mobile
    • Android
    • Apps
    • iOS
    • Other
  • Sports
  • Tech Updates
    • Automobiles
    • Gadgets
No Result
View All Result
Do Enjoy Life
No Result
View All Result
ADVERTISEMENT
Home Computer Software

Spreadsheet-style tool could democratize database design

Ina L. McManus by Ina L. McManus
December 21, 2022
in Software
0
ADVERTISEMENT

When an organization needs a new database, it typically hires a contractor to build it or buys a heavily supported product customized to its industry sector. Usually, the organization already owns all the data it wants to put in the database. But writing complex queries in SQL or some other database scripting language to pull data from many sources, filter, sort, combine, and otherwise manipulate it, and display it in an easy-to-read format requires expertise that few organizations have in-house.

New software from researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory could make databases much easier for laypeople to work with. The program’s home screen looks like a spreadsheet, but it lets users build their own database queries and reports by combining functions familiar to any spreadsheet user. Simple drop-down menus let the user pull data into the tool from multiple sources. The user can then sort and filter the data, recombine it using algebraic functions, and hide unneeded columns and rows, and the tool will automatically generate the corresponding database queries.

The researchers also conducted a usability study that suggests that even in its prototype form, their tool could be easier to use than existing commercial database systems that represent thousands, if not tens of thousands, of programmer-hours of work. “Organizations spend about $35 billion a year on relational databases,” says Eirik Bakke, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science who led the development of the new tool. “They provide the software to store the data and to do efficient computation on the data, but they do not provide a user interface. So what inevitably ends up happening when you have something extremely industry-specific is, you have to hire a programmer who spends about a year of work on building a user interface for your particular domain.“

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

design

Related Articles : 

  • VMware Puts Security on the Heart of its Software
  • Somali Government Acquires Net Control Software for Social Media Security
  • Explorer Surgical lands $three million greater for running room software
  • Hewlett Packard offloads last Autonomy assets software ideal
  • UK tech firm swoops
Article Summary show
Familiar face
Hands-on approach

Familiar face

Bakke‘s tool, which he developed with the help of his thesis advisor, MIT Professor of Electrical Engineering David Karger, could allow organizations to get up and running with a new database without waiting for a custom interface. Bakke and Karger presented the tool at the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Conference on Management of Data.

The tool’s main drop-down menu has 17 entries, most of which — such as “hide,“ “sort,“ “filter,“ and “delete“ — will look familiar to spreadsheet users. In the conference paper, Bakke and Karger prove that those apparently simple functions are enough to construct any database query possible in SQL-92, which is the core of the version of SQL taught in most database classes.

Some database queries are simple: A company might, for instance, want a printout of the names and phone numbers of all of its customers. But it might also want a printout of the names and phone numbers of just those customers in a given zip code whose purchase totals exceeded some thresholds amount over a particular time span. If each purchase has its own record in the database, the query will need to include code for summing up the purchase totals and comparing them to the threshold quantity.

What makes things even more complicated is that a database will generally store related data in different tables. For demonstration purposes, Bakke loaded several existing databases into his system. A database used at MIT to track research grants has 35 separate tables; another, which records all the information in a university course catalog, has 15.

Likewise, a company might store customers’ names and contact information in one table, lists their purchase orders in another, and the items constituting each purchase order in a third. A relatively simple query that pulls up the phone numbers of everyone who bought a particular product in a particular date range could require tracking data across all three tables.

ADVERTISEMENT

Bakke and Karger‘s tool lets the user pull in individual columns from any table — name and phone number from the first, purchase orders and dates from the second, and products from the third. (The tool will automatically group the products associated with each purchase order together in a single spreadsheet “cell.“) A filter function like that found in most spreadsheet programs can restrict the date range and limit the results to those that include a particular product. The user can then hide any unnecessary columns, and the report is complete.

Hands-on approach

Previous academic projects have explored techniques for database query construction using editable flow-chart diagrams or virtual buttons that can be snapped together. But Bakke and Karger’s tool enables what is known in computer science as “direct manipulation” of data. “It really harkens back to our physical nature, that we’re very comfortable with the idea that if I pick something up and I twist it, then it will twist, and if I shake it, it will shake,” Karger says. “You want the same feeling when you’re manipulating information in a computer — that you’re picking up the information and pushing it this way or sliding it that way or cutting things out — instead of writing some instructions telling the computer to do something. And then the computer does it, and you say, ‘Oh, that’s not what I meant.’“

Bakke conducted two studies on the usability of his tool. In one of them, 14 participants were asked to construct a series of queries using the tool and then rated their experience using the System Usability Scale, a standard measure that allows the comparison of different types of software. The scores hovered around the 50th percentile in business software, which isn’t bad for an academic research project. But the scores for Microsoft’s Access database program are much worse — around the fourth percentile. “The way to describe that result is that database querying is hard, but we can make it tolerable,“ Bakke says.

At present, Bakke‘s tool enables query construction on an existing database, but it doesn’t enable the direct entry or modification of data. He expects to begin adding that functionality over the next six months and his office wall is covered with a list of functions that he’d like to add and bugs he needs to repair. But he hopes to release the tool in a year or so. “It’s almost ironic,“ Karger says. “Eirik‘s software is far more robust than just about everything that graduate students have built. But he’s not satisfied with releasing it in its current form. He’s aiming for something of commercial quality.” “It turns out that when you’re dealing with people’s data, you really need to get it right,“ Bakke says.

ADVERTISEMENT
Previous Post

OpenVLC platform for research in Visible Light Communication Systems

Next Post

Tracking brain atrophy in MS could become routine, thanks to new software

Ina L. McManus

Ina L. McManus

Hi,This is Ina who works hard for this website and love to share the news in my website. You are most welcome to contact me anytime you want.I am always dedicated and well researched person.

Next Post
Tracking brain atrophy in MS could become routine, thanks to new software

Tracking brain atrophy in MS could become routine, thanks to new software

No Result
View All Result
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Updates

Download windows 10 without upgrading

Download windows 10 without upgrading

March 26, 2023
Choose The Softest Blanket Of Your Dreams

Choose The Softest Blanket Of Your Dreams

March 24, 2023
Why Australian companies are switching to payroll outsourcing

Why Australian companies are switching to payroll outsourcing

March 23, 2023
Use The Best Eyeshadow Palette With One Click

Use The Best Eyeshadow Palette With One Click

March 23, 2023
How Can Life Insurance Help In Saving Taxes?

How Can Life Insurance Help In Saving Taxes?

March 23, 2023
ADVERTISEMENT
  • World News
  • Sports
  • Blogger
  • Education
  • WordPress
  • Gaming
  • Software
  • Mac
  • iOS
  • Android

Copyright © Do Enjoy Life - Powered by Tendo Mag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Blogger
  • Computer
    • Gaming
    • Mac
    • Software
    • Tips
  • Finance
  • Internet
    • Internet Tips
    • Latest Internet News
    • Seo Tips
    • WordPress
  • Life
    • Education
    • Beauty
    • Health
    • Property
    • Travel n Tour
    • World News
  • Mobile
    • Android
    • Apps
    • iOS
    • Other
  • Sports
  • Tech Updates
    • Automobiles
    • Gadgets

Copyright © Do Enjoy Life - Powered by Tendo Mag.