Welcome

Reader in Database Systems in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. I am a member of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture, and the Database Group.

Current research interests

Just-in-time SQL compilation

One of the traditional ways of evaluating SQL queries is through interpretation. That is, the database system creates an execution plan for the query, which it then executes using generic operator implementations. We have looked at the problem of bypassing the interpretation stage altogether and creating native customised code for the execution of the SQL query. The native code is then compiled and executed on the fly. The results of this work can be found in our ICDE 2010 paper Generating Code for Holistic Query Evaluation.

Heterogeneous storage

Given the vast performance differences between persistent storage alternatives, in addition to most hardware deployoments using more than one of those alternatives in their storage hierarchy, it becomes imperative to have disciplined ways of managing the diverse storage stack. In the past, we have looked at efficient ways of combining both solid-state drives and hard-disk drives to boost I/O performance in database systems. Some of our results can be found in the VLDB 2008 paper Flashing up the Storage Layer and the ADBIS 2011 paper Designing a Flash-Aware Two-Level Cache.

Distributed computing

Starting from our previous work on Distributed File Structures in a Peer-to-peer Environment, and jumping on the MapReduce bandwagon, we are currently looking at ways of improving the usability of the Hadoop/MapReduce framework by extending it with more elaborate file system and parallel programming primitives.

Contact information

Informatics Forum, Room 5.11
10 Crichton Street
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, EH8 9AB
UK

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5183
email: sviglas at inf.ed.ac.uk