DSG Seminar Series • Data Models from Traditional Databases to NoSQL Systems

Paolo Atzeni, Database Professor and Head of the Department of Engineering
Università Roma Tre

NoSQL systems have gained their popularity for many reasons, including the flexibility they provide with modeling, which tries to relax the rigidity provided by the relational model and by the other structured models.

The talk will discuss how traditional notions related to modeling can be useful in this context as well, both in the search for standardization and uniform access (as the variety of systems and models can create difficulties in developers and in their organizations) and in the support to generic approaches to logical and physical design (with the idea that there are some principles that apply to most systems, despite the significant heterogeneity).

Paolo Atzeni is Database Professor and Head of the Department of Engineering at Università Roma Tre. He received his Dr. Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from Università di Roma "La Sapienza" in 1980. Before joining Università Roma Tre, he was with IASI-CNR in Rome, then a faculty member at Università di Napoli and later a professor at Università di Roma La Sapienza. He also had visiting appointments at the University of Toronto, at Università dell'Aquila and at Microsoft Research.

He has worked on various topics in the database field, including relational database theory, conceptual models and design tools, deductive databases, databases and the Web, model management, cooperation of database systems. He is the founder of the database group at Roma Tre, which includes five faculty members and various postdocs and students. They collaborate with various groups in Italy and abroad, on topics that include data models, data warehouses, data in the Web world.

He was trustee and the vicepresident of the VLDB Endowment and he is currently a member of the Executive Board of the EDBT Association, of which he is also past President.