Quality is in the eye of the beholder: towards user-centric web-databases

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of database-driven web sites (or web-databases) has brought upon a plethora of applications where both Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Data (QoD) are of paramount importance to the end users. In our previous work, we have proposed Quality Contracts, a comprehensive framework for specifying multiple dimensions of QoS/QoD; we have also developed user-centric admission control and scheduling algorithms in web databases, whose goal is to maximize overall system performance. In this work, we turn our attention to the user side of the equation. Specifically, we propose to demonstrate how the adaptation of Quality Contracts (QCs) by the users can lead to vastly different performance results, both from the user point of view (i.e., user satisfaction) and also from the system point of view. Towards this, we propose to structure our demo in the form of an interactive game, where participants will be playing the role of users continuously adapting their QCs over time, while "playing" against system-generated users, who follow predetermined QC adaptation policies. Finally, we also propose to illustrate the effect of different admission control and scheduling policies.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Transaction processing; Query processing
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software
          Subjects: Performance evaluation (efficiency and effectiveness); User profiles and alert services

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Economics, Experimentation, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
quality contracts, quality of data, quality of service, query processing, transaction processing, user-centric, web-databases