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Extremely Large Databases Workshop at SLAC
:: 25 October, 2007
Data collections at SLAC aren't just pretty big—the experts call them "Extremely Large Databases." BaBar's two petabytes of data will seem paltry when the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is expected to collect 100 petabytes over 10 years, comes online in 2014. SLAC is leading the effort to build the LSST's database system.
Companies such as Google, eBay, AT&T and AOL depend on large databases too. But no commercial enterprise makes the kind of software needed to manage all the petabytes that some users require. "Almost all of [these companies] make their own homegrown systems," says SLAC Information Systems Specialist Jacek Becla.
Becla aims to confront that issue, starting with a workshop today at SLAC. Becla invited commercial database vendors, industry and academic users of large databases and what he calls "the world's best database gurus" to the Extremely Large Databases Workshop. Kian-Tat Lim and Andrew Hanushevsky, both of SLAC, also helped to organize the meeting.
The meeting is an opportunity for users to tell the vendors what they need from database systems. "Vendors should go home with the ideas of what they should be adding to their systems," Becla says.
SLAC, Becla says, provides a "neutral ground" for these diverse and competing groups to meet. For example, he says, Yahoo! would be reluctant to attend such a conference if it was held at Google, but both will come to SLAC.
"Perhaps we will be able to build a longer-term relationship among cutting-edge database users from industry, the scientific community and the database vendors," Becla says.
About Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SLAC research program centers on experimental and theoretical research in elementary particle physics using electron beams and a broad program of research in atomic and solid state physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine using synchrotron radiation. The 3.2 kilometer (2.0 mile) long underground accelerator is the longest linear accelerator in the world, and is claimed to be "the world's straightest object." SLAC's meeting facilities provided a venue for the homebrew computer club and other pioneers of the 1980s home computer revolution, and later SLAC hosted the first webpage in the U.S. The above-ground klystron gallery atop the beamline is the longest building in the United States.
History
Founded in 1962, the facility is located on 1.72 square kilometer (426 acres) of Stanford University-owned land on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California—just west from the University's main campus. The main accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer long RF linear accelerator which can accelerate electrons and positrons up to 50 GeV, has been operational since 1966. It is buried 10 metres (30 feet) below ground and passes underneath Interstate 280. As of 2005, SLAC employs over 1,000 people, some 150 of which are physicists with doctorate degrees, and serves over 3,000 visiting researchers yearly, operating particle accelerators for high-energy physics and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) for synchrotron light radiation research.
Research at SLAC has produced three Nobel Prizes in Physics:
1976 - The Charm Quark — see J/Ψ particle
1990 - Quark structure inside Protons and Neutrons
1995 - The tau lepton
Also, SSRL was "indispensable" in the research leading to the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
In the early-to-mid 90s, the Stanford Linear Collider or SLC, investigated the properties of the Z boson using the Stanford Large Detector.
Release link: http://today.slac.stanford.edu/
Tags: SLAC , Databases , Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) , Google , eBay , AT&T , AOL , Jacek Becla , Kian-Tat Lim , Andrew Hanushevsky , neutral ground. ,
