The National Science Foundation awarded a research grant to Ugur Cetintemel and Stan Zdonik, in the anticipated amount of $500,000, for the automatic design of next-generation database systems. Advanced database systems are being designed to support complex processing of big data, integrate novel hardware such as solid-state storage, and operate on highly distributed, often virtualized computing clouds. The project aims to develop novel, sophisticated automatic design tools for database system configuration and management, addressing the growing complexity and diversity of these newly-emerging systems that render manual solutions ineffective and unscalable. The project will specifically focus on incremental approaches to ...