Development of new data partitioning and allocation algorithms for query optimization of distributed data warehouse systems

Distributed databases and in particular distributed data warehousing are becoming an increasingly important technology for information integration and data analysis. Data Warehouse (DW) systems are used by decision makers for performance measurement and decision support. However, although data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) are essential elements of decision support, the OLAP query response time is strongly affected by the volume of data need to be accessed from storage disks. Data partitioning is one of the physical design techniques that may be used to optimize query processing cost in DWs. It is a non redundant optimization technique because it does not replicate data, contrary to redundant techniques like materialized views and indexes. The warehouse partitioning problem is concerned with determining the set of dimension tables to be partitioned and using them to generate the fact table fragments. In this work an enhanced grouping algorithm that avoids the limitations of some existing vertical partitioning algorithms is proposed. Furthermore, a static partitioning algorithm that allows fragmentation at early stages of schema design is presented. The thesis also, investigates the performance of the data warehouse after implementing a combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA) techniques to horizontally partition the data warehouse star schema. It, then presents the experimentation and implementation results of the proposed algorithm. This research presented different approaches to optimize data fragments allocation cost using a greedy mathematical model and a combination of simulated annealing and genetic algorithm to determine the site by site allocation leading to optimal solutions for fragments distribution. Throughout this thesis, the term fragmentation and partitioning will be used interchangeably

A workload‑driven approach for view selection in large dimensional datasets

The information explosion the world has witnessed in the last two decades has forced businesses to adopt a data-driven culture for them to be competitive. These data-driven businesses have access to countless sources of information, and face the challenge of making sense of overwhelming amounts of data in a efficient and reliable manner, which implies the execution of read-intensive operations. In the context of this challenge, a framework for the dynamic read-optimization of large dimensional datasets has been designed, and on top of it a workload-driven mechanism for automatic materialized view selection and creation has been developed. This paper presents an extensive description of this mechanism, along with a proof-of-concept implementation of it and its corresponding performance evaluation. Results show that the proposed mechanism is able to derive a limited but comprehensive set of views leading to a drop in query latency ranging from 80% to 99.99% at the expense of 13% of the disk space used by the base dataset. This way, the devised mechanism enables speeding up query execution by building materialized views that match the actual demand of query workloads

A comparison of statistical machine learning methods in heartbeat detection and classification

In health care, patients with heart problems require quick responsiveness in a clinical setting or in the operating theatre. Towards that end, automated classification of heartbeats is vital as some heartbeat irregularities are time consuming to detect. Therefore, analysis of electro-cardiogram (ECG) signals is an active area of research. The methods proposed in the literature depend on the structure of a heartbeat cycle. In this paper, we use interval and amplitude based features together with a few samples from the ECG signal as a feature vector. We studied a variety of classification algorithms focused especially on a type of arrhythmia known as the ventricular ectopic fibrillation (VEB). We compare the performance of the classifiers against algorithms proposed in the literature and make recommendations regarding features, sampling rate, and choice of the classifier to apply in a real-time clinical setting. The extensive study is based on the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. Our main contribution is the evaluation of existing classifiers over a range sampling rates, recommendation of a detection methodology to employ in a practical setting, and extend the notion of a mixture of experts to a larger class of algorithms

In-memory caching for multi-query optimization of data-intensive scalable computing workloads

In modern large-scale distributed systems, analytics jobs submitted by various users often share similar work. Instead of optimizing jobs independently, multi-query optimization techniques can be employed to save a considerable amount of cluster resources. In this work, we introduce a novel method combining in-memory cache primitives and multi-query optimization, to improve the efficiency of data-intensive, scalable computing frameworks. By careful selection and exploitation of common (sub) expressions, while satisfying memory constraints, our method transforms a batch of queries into a new, more efficient one which avoids unnecessary recomputations. To find feasible and efficient execution plans, our method uses a cost-based optimization formulation akin to the multiple-choice knapsack problem. Experiments on a prototype implementation of our system show significant benefits of worksharing for TPC-DS workloads

Transparent Forecasting Strategies in Database Management Systems

Whereas traditional data warehouse systems assume that data is complete or has been carefully preprocessed, increasingly more data is imprecise, incomplete, and inconsistent. This is especially true in the context of big data, where massive amount of data arrives continuously in real-time from vast data sources. Nevertheless, modern data analysis involves sophisticated statistical algorithm that go well beyond traditional BI and, additionally, is increasingly performed by non-expert users. Both trends require transparent data mining techniques that efficiently handle missing data and present a complete view of the database to the user. Time series forecasting estimates future, not yet available, data of a time series and represents one way of dealing with missing data. Moreover, it enables queries that retrieve a view of the database at any point in time - past, present, and future. This article presents an overview of forecasting techniques in database management systems. After discussing possible application areas for time series forecasting, we give a short mathematical background of the main forecasting concepts. We then outline various general strategies of integrating time series forecasting inside a database and discuss some individual techniques from the database community. We conclude this article by introducing a novel forecasting-enabled database management architecture that natively and transparently integrates forecast models

Automatic physical database design : recommending materialized views

This work discusses physical database design while focusing on the problem of selecting materialized views for improving the performance of a database system. We first address the satisfiability and implication problems for mixed arithmetic constraints. The results are used to support the construction of a search space for view selection problems. We proposed an approach for constructing a search space based on identifying maximum commonalities among queries and on rewriting queries using views. These commonalities are used to define candidate views for materialization from which an optimal or near-optimal set can be chosen as a solution to the view selection problem. Using a search space constructed this way, we address a specific instance of the view selection problem that aims at minimizing the view maintenance cost of multiple materialized views using multi-query optimization techniques. Further, we study this same problem in the context of a commercial database management system in the presence of memory and time restrictions. We also suggest a heuristic approach for maintaining the views while guaranteeing that the restrictions are satisfied. Finally, we consider a dynamic version of the view selection problem where the workload is a sequence of query and update statements. In this case, the views can be created (materialized) and dropped during the execution of the workload. We have implemented our approaches to the dynamic view selection problem and performed extensive experimental testing. Our experiments show that our approaches perform in most cases better than previous ones in terms of effectiveness and efficiency

Applications of river formation dynamics

River formation dynamics is a metaheuristic where solutions are constructed by iteratively modifying the values associated to the nodes of a graph. Its gradient orientation provides interesting features such as the fast reinforcement of new shortcuts, the natural avoidance of cycles, and the focused elimination of blind alleys. Since the method was firstly proposed in 2007, several research groups have applied it to a wide variety of application domains, such as telecommunications, software testing, industrial manufacturing processes, or navigation. In this paper we review the main works of the last decade where the river formation dynamics metaheuristic has been applied to solve optimization problems

Forecasting in Database Systems

Time series forecasting is a fundamental prerequisite for decision-making processes and crucial in a number of domains such as production planning and energy load balancing. In the past, forecasting was often performed by statistical experts in dedicated software environments outside of current database systems. However, forecasts are increasingly required by non-expert users or have to be computed fully automatically without any human intervention. Furthermore, we can observe an ever increasing data volume and the need for accurate and timely forecasts over large multi-dimensional data sets. As most data subject to analysis is stored in database management systems, a rising trend addresses the integration of forecasting inside a DBMS. Yet, many existing approaches follow a black-box style and try to keep changes to the database system as minimal as possible. While such approaches are more general and easier to realize, they miss significant opportunities for improved performance and usability. In this thesis, we introduce a novel approach that seamlessly integrates time series forecasting into a traditional database management system. In contrast to flash-back queries that allow a view on the data in the past, we have developed a Flash-Forward Database System (F2DB) that provides a view on the data in the future. It supports a new query type - a forecast query - that enables forecasting of time series data and is automatically and transparently processed by the core engine of an existing DBMS. We discuss necessary extensions to the parser, optimizer, and executor of a traditional DBMS. We furthermore introduce various optimization techniques for three different types of forecast queries: ad-hoc queries, recurring queries, and continuous queries. First, we ease the expensive model creation step of ad-hoc forecast queries by reducing the amount of processed data with traditional sampling techniques. Second, we decrease the runtime of recurring forecast queries by materializing models in a specialized index structure. However, a large number of time series as well as high model creation and maintenance costs require a careful selection of such models. Therefore, we propose a model configuration advisor that determines a set of forecast models for a given query workload and multi-dimensional data set. Finally, we extend forecast queries with continuous aspects allowing an application to register a query once at our system. As new time series values arrive, we send notifications to the application based on predefined time and accuracy constraints. All of our optimization approaches intend to increase the efficiency of forecast queries while ensuring high forecast accuracy