XLDB refers to eXtremely Large Data Bases. The definition of extremely large refers to data sets that are too big in terms of volume (too much), and/or velocity (too fast), and/of variety (too many places, too many formats) to be handled using conventional solutions.
Contents
History
In October 2007 the XLDB experts gathered at SLAC for the First Workshop on Extremely Large Databases. As a result, the XLDB research community was formed. to meet rapidly growing demands, in addition to the original invitational workshop, an open conference, tutorials, and annual satellite events on different continents were added. The main event, held annually at Stanford gathers over 300 technically savvy attendees. XLDB is one of the premier database events catered towards both academic and industrial communities.
Goals
The main goals of this community include:
XLDB Community
As of 2013, the community consisted of about a thousand members including:
- Scientists who develop, use, or plan to develop or use XLDB for their research, from laboratories.
- Commercial users of XLDB.
- Providers of database products, including commercial vendors and representatives from open source database communities.
- Academic database researchers.
XLDB Conferences, Workshops and Tutorials
The community meets annually at Stanford where the main event is held each fall, usually in September. These who live too far from California to attend have the opportunity to attend satellite events, organized annually around May/June either in Asia or in Europe.
A detailed report is produced after each workshop.
Tangible results
The XLDB events led to initiating the effort of building a new open source, science database, SciDB.
The XLDB organizers started defining a science benchmark for scientific data management systems called SS-DB.
At 2012 the XLDB organizers announced that two major databases that support arrays as first-class objects (MonetDB SciQL and SciDB) have formed a working group in conjunction with XLDB. This working group is proposing a common syntax (provisionally named “ArrayQL”) for manipulating arrays, including array creation and query.