Jason Sawin, chair and professor of computer information sciences at the University of St. Thomas, will share his research in bitmap indices, bitmap compression and querying.
Computer systems that monitor the stock market, record weather information, and perform scientific simulations generate staggering amounts of data. The databases that store this information generally contain a large number of tuples, high dimensions of numerical attributes, and are typically read-only. These traits make such databases ideally suited for bitmap indices. Bitmap indices provide a coarse representation of the data stored in the database and can significantly speed up the information retrieval process. They also have the benefit of being highly compressible, which makes them extremely space efficient.
Sawin will present an overview of bitmap indices and his recent work in bitmap compression and querying. He will also discuss several open problems relating to the topic. The audience will not be expected to have prior knowledge of databases, indexing or bitmaps.
Join us on Monday, December 5, from 3:10 to 4 p.m. in Hayes Hall 109 for this exciting presentation. We hope to see you there!