Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The size and complexity of today's information systems dwarf those of five, let alonetwenty-five, years ago. Demands of modern applications are moving from "large" databasescomprising a few billion bytes, or gigabytes, of information to systems of severalterabytes (one trillion bytes) and even petabytes. As demand escalates, the manner inwhich data is organized and the algorithms (or problem-solving methods) used tomanipulate information become increasingly critical. More effective techniques thataddress time and space constraints must be created to allow large systems to betterperform sophisticated searches and updates. In tandem with this application drivenwork, is the fundamental notion of actually proving that the methods developed areindeed the best possible for the tasks at hand.