Evaluating Interactive Data Systems

Abstract

Highly interactive query interfaces have become a popular tool for ad-hoc data analysis and exploration, posing a new kind of workload to the underlying data infrastructure. Compared with traditional systems that are optimized for throughput or batched performance, ad-hoc and interactive data exploration systems focus more on user-centric interactivity, which raises a new class of performance challenges. Further, with the advent of new interaction devices~(e.g., touch, gesture) and different query interface paradigms~(e.g., sliders), maintaining interactive performance becomes even more challenging. Thus, when building interactive data systems, there is a clear need to articulate the design space.