Abstract
There appears to be a discrepancy between
the research topics being pursued by the database research community and
the key problems facing information systems decisions makers such as Chief
Information Officers (CIOs). Panelists will present their view of the key
problems that would benefit from a research focus in the database research
community and will discuss perceived discrepancies. Based on personal
experience,
the most commonly discussed information systems problems facing CIOs today
include:
1. Packaged
Applications
Everybody is doing "buy", not "build".
That completely insulates users from the DBMS. Hence, they don't care what
DBMS gets used. All packaged applications are "agnostic", i.e.
run on everybody's DBMS. Will this make our research area irrelevant?
2. Legacy Systems
The "smokestack" systems from 20 years
ago are the Achilles' heel of everybody. They seem to drive everything.
There seem to be very few good ideas of what to do in this area. So what
are we doing here?
3. Middleware
Should it be messaging, application server, or
DBMS? How can one choose between CORBA, DCOM, and RMI given the rift between
Microsoft and the rest of the world on these issues? So what are we doing
about this? |
4. Enterprise Data Integration
Enterprise data integration is the top item on every CIOs wish list. So
what are we doing about it?
5. "No Knobs"
DBMSs (especially one of the popular ones) are
way too hard to install, setup, tune, and maintain. When are we going to
learn something from the vendors of children's games and get real here?
6. User Interfaces
The DBMS research community is out to lunch here.
They have contributed nearly nothing to this important area. Program committee
after program committee routinely bows to this alter and then rejects the
submitted papers. Are we simply abdicating this space?
7. Software Productivity
Hardware productivity goes up by a factor of two
every two years. Software productivity has gone up less than a factor of
two in the last 20 years. What can be done about this?
8. IT Project Failure
It is estimated that 70-80% of all IT projects
fail. If civil engineers built bridges like we build software, modern society
would fire them. What right do we have to call ourselves professionals?
What can be done here? |