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Predictable & Intelligent Systems

The foundational research lineage spanning performance diagnosis, workload modeling, robust design, approximate analytics, and predictable database behavior.

How can a data system make uncertainty, tradeoffs, and future behavior visible?

This program connects systems that diagnose and predict performance with systems that make explicit tradeoffs around latency, accuracy, and robustness. It provides the intellectual lineage for current work on systems that learn and optimize their own behavior.

Methods and questions

  • performance modeling
  • diagnosis
  • robust optimization
  • approximate query processing
  • workload intelligence

Projects

Publications

DMon: Efficient Detection and Correction of Data Locality Problems Using Selective Profiling

Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Ian Neal, Gilles Pokam, Barzan Mozafari, Baris Kasikci

OSDI 2021 · USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{bd35a4d0-2624-465c-aabb-0cf0d78b3147,
  title = {DMon: Efficient Detection and Correction of Data Locality Problems Using Selective Profiling},
  author = {Tanvir Ahmed Khan and Ian Neal and Gilles Pokam and Barzan Mozafari and Baris Kasikci},
  booktitle = {USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation},
  year = {2021}
}

QuickSel: Quick Selectivity Learning with Mixture Models

Yongjoo Park, Shucheng Zhong, Barzan Mozafari

SIGMOD 2020 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Technical Report ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{ea3d8506-1f2f-40ea-8bcb-6a74f72e12f0,
  title = {QuickSel: Quick Selectivity Learning with Mixture Models},
  author = {Yongjoo Park and Shucheng Zhong and Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {10.1145/3318464.3389727}
}

BlinkML: Efficient Maximum Likelihood Estimation with Probabilistic Guarantees

Yongjoo Park, Jingyi Qing, Xiaoyang Shen, Barzan Mozafari

SIGMOD 2019 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Technical Report ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{50db23fc-a5a3-4d7f-ac07-2a696129c92f,
  title = {BlinkML: Efficient Maximum Likelihood Estimation with Probabilistic Guarantees},
  author = {Yongjoo Park and Jingyi Qing and Xiaoyang Shen and Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.1145/3299869.3300077}
}

Join on Samples: A Theoretical Guide for Practitioners

Dawei Huang, Dong Young Yoon, Seth Pettie, Barzan Mozafari

PVLDB 2019 · Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment

Paper ↗Technical Report ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{6d32861d-ba95-4e8b-91c3-bc689ec60e12,
  title = {Join on Samples: A Theoretical Guide for Practitioners},
  author = {Dawei Huang and Dong Young Yoon and Seth Pettie and Barzan Mozafari},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.14778/3372716.3372726}
}

SnappyData

Barzan Mozafari

Encyclopedia of Big Data Technologies 2019

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{f48324cb-ef73-4f50-9ed9-7a8dfec3079f,
  title = {SnappyData},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {Encyclopedia of Big Data Technologies},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_258-1}
}

Contention-Aware Lock Scheduling for Transactional Databases

Boyu Tian, Jiamin Huang, Barzan Mozafari, Grant Schoenebeck

PVLDB 2018 · Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment

Paper ↗Technical Report ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{5d2dbe3f-c6e6-40c8-9a82-9f8e042ef4a2,
  title = {Contention-Aware Lock Scheduling for Transactional Databases},
  author = {Boyu Tian and Jiamin Huang and Barzan Mozafari and Grant Schoenebeck},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1145/3187009.3177740}
}

Demonstration of VerdictDB, the Platform-Independent AQP System

Wen He, Yongjoo Park, Idris Hanafi, Jacob Yatvitskiy, Barzan Mozafari

SIGMOD 2018 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Code ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{9438c730-b302-49f6-bed8-3a77c1e7a2c2,
  title = {Demonstration of VerdictDB, the Platform-Independent AQP System},
  author = {Wen He and Yongjoo Park and Idris Hanafi and Jacob Yatvitskiy and Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1145/3183713.3193538}
}

VerdictDB: Universalizing Approximate Query Processing

Yongjoo Park, Barzan Mozafari, Joseph Sorenson, Junhao Wang

SIGMOD 2018 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{ed762d26-878b-453f-b272-09d069f37d64,
  title = {VerdictDB: Universalizing Approximate Query Processing},
  author = {Yongjoo Park and Barzan Mozafari and Joseph Sorenson and Junhao Wang},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1145/3183713.3196905}
}

Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time

Yongjoo Park, Ahmad Shahab Tajik, Michael J. Cafarella, Barzan Mozafari

SIGMOD 2017 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{3cebf7e2-930f-4c8a-aa17-75a4c32cb001,
  title = {Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time},
  author = {Yongjoo Park and Ahmad Shahab Tajik and Michael J. Cafarella and Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.1145/3035918.3064013}
}

SnappyData: A Unified Cluster for Streaming, Transactions and Interactice Analytics

Barzan Mozafari, Jags Ramnarayan, Sudhir Menon, Yogesh Mahajan, Soubhik Chakraborty, Hemant Bhanawat, Kishor Bachhav

CIDR 2017 · Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{e6de4a52-07a5-47c5-8196-ace46d2a49c2,
  title = {SnappyData: A Unified Cluster for Streaming, Transactions and Interactice Analytics},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Jags Ramnarayan and Sudhir Menon and Yogesh Mahajan and Soubhik Chakraborty and Hemant Bhanawat and Kishor Bachhav},
  booktitle = {Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research},
  year = {2017}
}

Statistical Analysis of Latency Through Semantic Profiling

Jiamin Huang, Barzan Mozafari, Thomas F. Wenisch

EuroSys 2017 · ACM European Conference on Computer Systems

Paper ↗Code ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{593a1faa-d447-439a-aca4-9dc5a037630e,
  title = {Statistical Analysis of Latency Through Semantic Profiling},
  author = {Jiamin Huang and Barzan Mozafari and Thomas F. Wenisch},
  booktitle = {ACM European Conference on Computer Systems},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.1145/3064176.3064179}
}

DBSherlock: A Performance Diagnostic Tool for Transactional Databases

Dong Young Yoon, Ning Niu, Barzan Mozafari

SIGMOD 2016 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Code ↗Data ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{a5460b19-8bff-4fd2-ae5e-d0ce7477454b,
  title = {DBSherlock: A Performance Diagnostic Tool for Transactional Databases},
  author = {Dong Young Yoon and Ning Niu and Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1145/2882903.2915218}
}

Extending Relational Query Languages for Data Streams

Nikolay Laptev, Barzan Mozafari, Hamid Mousavi, Hetal Thakkar, Haixun Wang, Kai Zeng, Carlo Zaniolo

Data Stream Management 2016

Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{7ccb269e-e026-4b8f-bbbd-d3de83764f62,
  title = {Extending Relational Query Languages for Data Streams},
  author = {Nikolay Laptev and Barzan Mozafari and Hamid Mousavi and Hetal Thakkar and Haixun Wang and Kai Zeng and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {Data Stream Management},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-540-28608-0_18}
}
Project ↗
Cite
@article{79a739c2-69af-4e7a-9fab-9e1ca9ca9730,
  title = {Identifying the Major Sources of Variance in Transaction Latencies: Towards More Predictable Databases},
  author = {Jiamin Huang and Barzan Mozafari and Thomas F. Wenisch},
  journal = {Computing Research Repository},
  year = {2016}
}

SnappyData: A Hybrid Transactional Analytical Store Built On Spark

Jags Ramnarayan, Barzan Mozafari, Sumedh Wale, Sudhir Menon, Neeraj Kumar, Hemant Bhanawat, Soubhik Chakraborty, Yogesh Mahajan, Rishitesh Mishra, Kishor Bachhav

SIGMOD 2016 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{cea59a03-38c4-4acb-bd2d-a41ecabe154a,
  title = {SnappyData: A Hybrid Transactional Analytical Store Built On Spark},
  author = {Jags Ramnarayan and Barzan Mozafari and Sumedh Wale and Sudhir Menon and Neeraj Kumar and Hemant Bhanawat and Soubhik Chakraborty and Yogesh Mahajan and Rishitesh Mishra and Kishor Bachhav},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1145/2882903.2899408}
}

Visualization-aware sampling for very large databases

Yongjoo Park, Michael J. Cafarella, Barzan Mozafari

ICDE 2016 · IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering

Paper ↗Technical Report ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{fb040b81-82bc-493d-9322-fd576b39c635,
  title = {Visualization-aware sampling for very large databases},
  author = {Yongjoo Park and Michael J. Cafarella and Barzan Mozafari},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1109/ICDE.2016.7498287}
}

CliffGuard: A Principled Framework for Finding Robust Database Designs

Barzan Mozafari, Eugene Zhen Ye Goh, Dong Young Yoon

SIGMOD 2015 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Code ↗Project ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{a55995d1-caca-4dbc-a138-c382c0a1e41c,
  title = {CliffGuard: A Principled Framework for Finding Robust Database Designs},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Eugene Zhen Ye Goh and Dong Young Yoon},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.1145/2723372.2749454}
}
Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{7c01b9d8-7064-406d-8eed-815b804063b2,
  title = {DBSeer: Pain-free Database Administration through Workload Intelligence},
  author = {Dong Young Yoon and Barzan Mozafari and Douglas P. Brown},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.14778/2824032.2824130}
}

Neighbor-Sensitive Hashing

Yongjoo Park, Michael J. Cafarella, Barzan Mozafari

PVLDB 2015 · Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment

Paper ↗Code ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{0397a8bb-85c8-48d3-9e58-c230e57d1e43,
  title = {Neighbor-Sensitive Hashing},
  author = {Yongjoo Park and Michael J. Cafarella and Barzan Mozafari},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.14778/2850583.2850589}
}

Knowing when you're wrong: building fast and reliable approximate query processing systems

Sameer Agarwal, Henry Milner, Ariel Kleiner, Ameet Talwalkar, Michael I. Jordan, Samuel Madden, Barzan Mozafari, Ion Stoica

SIGMOD 2014 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{40bace5f-2a47-4fe3-b90a-bd42d385640b,
  title = {Knowing when you're wrong: building fast and reliable approximate query processing systems},
  author = {Sameer Agarwal and Henry Milner and Ariel Kleiner and Ameet Talwalkar and Michael I. Jordan and Samuel Madden and Barzan Mozafari and Ion Stoica},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.1145/2588555.2593667}
}

Scaling Up Crowd-Sourcing to Very Large Datasets: A Case for Active Learning

Barzan Mozafari, Purnamrita Sarkar, Michael J. Franklin, Michael I. Jordan, Samuel Madden

PVLDB 2014 · Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment

Paper ↗Data ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{d44b8133-c57f-42fc-8bcf-5b45a5abcdfc,
  title = {Scaling Up Crowd-Sourcing to Very Large Datasets: A Case for Active Learning},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Purnamrita Sarkar and Michael J. Franklin and Michael I. Jordan and Samuel Madden},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.14778/2735471.2735474}
}

The analytical bootstrap: a new method for fast error estimation in approximate query processing

Kai Zeng, Shi Gao, Barzan Mozafari, Carlo Zaniolo

SIGMOD 2014 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Code ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{2120f282-9549-4542-91fb-e9d4cf1d6c2f,
  title = {The analytical bootstrap: a new method for fast error estimation in approximate query processing},
  author = {Kai Zeng and Shi Gao and Barzan Mozafari and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.1145/2588555.2588579}
}

BlinkDB: queries with bounded errors and bounded response times on very large data

Sameer Agarwal, Barzan Mozafari, Aurojit Panda, Henry Milner, Samuel Madden, Ion Stoica

EuroSys 2013 · ACM European Conference on Computer Systems

Paper ↗Technical Report ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{7c357390-71f0-46af-b841-6dd64ddd5193,
  title = {BlinkDB: queries with bounded errors and bounded response times on very large data},
  author = {Sameer Agarwal and Barzan Mozafari and Aurojit Panda and Henry Milner and Samuel Madden and Ion Stoica},
  booktitle = {ACM European Conference on Computer Systems},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.1145/2465351.2465355}
}

Complex pattern matching in complex structures: The XSeq approach

Kai Zeng, Mohan Yang, Barzan Mozafari, Carlo Zaniolo

ICDE 2013 · IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{e4b63f8e-1771-4670-95ff-85617ce4d962,
  title = {Complex pattern matching in complex structures: The XSeq approach},
  author = {Kai Zeng and Mohan Yang and Barzan Mozafari and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.1109/ICDE.2013.6544936}
}

DBSeer: Resource and Performance Prediction for Building a Next Generation Database Cloud

Barzan Mozafari, Carlo Curino, Samuel Madden

CIDR 2013 · Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{dbc38671-6184-4ab9-ba11-eb567fddba7b,
  title = {DBSeer: Resource and Performance Prediction for Building a Next Generation Database Cloud},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Carlo Curino and Samuel Madden},
  booktitle = {Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research},
  year = {2013}
}

High-performance complex event processing over hierarchical data

Barzan Mozafari, Kai Zeng, Loris D'Antoni, Carlo Zaniolo

TODS 2013 · ACM Transactions on Database Systems

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{22d25841-e7b4-40ed-b5ae-1193d8c3a115,
  title = {High-performance complex event processing over hierarchical data},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Kai Zeng and Loris D'Antoni and Carlo Zaniolo},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Database Systems},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.1145/2536779}
}

Active Learning for Crowd-Sourced Databases

Barzan Mozafari, Purnamrita Sarkar, Michael J. Franklin, Michael I. Jordan, Samuel Madden

CoRR 2012 · Computing Research Repository

Project ↗
Cite
@article{0cebd645-dd1c-4dc8-9f14-a20d779e8067,
  title = {Active Learning for Crowd-Sourced Databases},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Purnamrita Sarkar and Michael J. Franklin and Michael I. Jordan and Samuel Madden},
  journal = {Computing Research Repository},
  year = {2012}
}

High-performance complex event processing over XML streams

Barzan Mozafari, Kai Zeng, Carlo Zaniolo

SIGMOD 2012 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{05587a10-0360-4b57-abdc-f56badf929f2,
  title = {High-performance complex event processing over XML streams},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Kai Zeng and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2012},
  doi = {10.1145/2213836.2213866}
}

SMM: A data stream management system for knowledge discovery

Hetal Thakkar, Nikolay Laptev, Hamid Mousavi, Barzan Mozafari, Vincenzo Russo, Carlo Zaniolo

ICDE 2011 · IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{3aa631e0-31d2-4d6d-929d-41476b51594d,
  title = {SMM: A data stream management system for knowledge discovery},
  author = {Hetal Thakkar and Nikolay Laptev and Hamid Mousavi and Barzan Mozafari and Vincenzo Russo and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering},
  year = {2011},
  doi = {10.1109/ICDE.2011.5767879}
}
Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@article{b1ccc0f4-295d-4a87-b560-5420bc1976cf,
  title = {From Regular Expressions to Nested Words: Unifying Languages and Query Execution for Relational and XML Sequences},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Kai Zeng and Carlo Zaniolo},
  journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
  year = {2010},
  doi = {10.14778/1920841.1920865}
}

K*SQL: a unifying engine for sequence patterns and XML

Barzan Mozafari, Kai Zeng, Carlo Zaniolo

SIGMOD 2010 · ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{42521ab9-b6d0-42cb-9b1b-395bacfdffc4,
  title = {K*SQL: a unifying engine for sequence patterns and XML},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Kai Zeng and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data},
  year = {2010},
  doi = {10.1145/1807167.1807302}
}

A Data Stream Mining System

Hetal Thakkar, Barzan Mozafari, Carlo Zaniolo

ICDM Workshops 2008 · IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{0c6165a7-5632-49b4-a501-a86c49031fd4,
  title = {A Data Stream Mining System},
  author = {Hetal Thakkar and Barzan Mozafari and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops},
  year = {2008},
  doi = {10.1109/ICDMW.2008.133}
}

Verifying and Mining Frequent Patterns from Large Windows over Data Streams

Barzan Mozafari, Hetal Thakkar, Carlo Zaniolo

ICDE 2008 · IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering

Paper ↗Project ↗
Cite
@inproceedings{421a620d-05d6-48fb-afa5-75d259a7a201,
  title = {Verifying and Mining Frequent Patterns from Large Windows over Data Streams},
  author = {Barzan Mozafari and Hetal Thakkar and Carlo Zaniolo},
  booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering},
  year = {2008},
  doi = {10.1109/ICDE.2008.4497426}
}