ACM Books recently published Rendering History: The Women of ACM-W. ACM-W is ACM's Women in Computing organization: supporting, celebrating, and advocating for women in computing. Rendering History contains a brief history of ACM-W and an annotated bibliography of important resources concerning women in computing. These two sections sandwich a longer section containing the first-hand stories of 38 women who served ACM-W in its first 30 years. The stories further divide into sections including The Presidents, The Directors, The Chairs, and The Professors and Researchers. This BOF continues the theme of Rendering History. The BOF will divide into subgroups for more intimate conversations about the rewards and challenges of the careers that define our lives and absorb our time. Anticipated groups: Professors, Chairs and Program Directors, and Students. Former Chairs of ACM-W, Valerie Barr and Jodi Tims, will lead a subgroup discussing ACM-W projects that can recruit and retain our students and encourage women in industry. Executive Director and CEO of the Computing Research Association, Tracy Camp, will guide a similar subgroup examining CRA-WP projects (Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research). The remaining subgroups will examine the issues that attendees bring to the discussion group. MaryAnne Egan and Wendy Powley will oversee a student subgroup; Elizabeth Hawthorne and Rachelle Hippler, a professor subgroup; and Gloria Townsend and Ellen Walker, a chair/director subgroup.

The SIGCSE Committee "Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community" will bring together all SIGCSE attendees interested in addressing the gender disparity in computing. Our discussion leaders connect to three of the most important organizations that relate to underrepresentation: ACM-W (Ruth Lennon), CRA-WP (Tracy Camp), and NCWIT (Lecia Barker). The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

In January 2004, the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community") was created. The SIGCSE Board approved the charter because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for a discussion of both underrepresentation issues that attendees' institutions have and also solutions that successful gender issues projects provide. Our discussion leaders connect to three of the most important organizations that relate to underrepresentation: ACM-W (Ruth Lennon), CRA-WP (Tracy Camp), and NCWIT (Matt Muchna). The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

In January 2004, we organized the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community"). The SIGCSE Board approved the charter, because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for dissemination of information concerning successful gender issues projects and that can provide time for discussion and brainstorming. We select projects to highlight, through listserv communication and through our connections with ACM-W, CRA-W, NCWIT, etc. The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

In January 2004, we organized the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community"). The SIGCSE Board approved the charter, because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for dissemination of information concerning successful gender issues projects and that can provide time for discussion and brainstorming. We select projects to highlight, through listserv communication and through our connections with ACM-W, CRA-W, NCWIT, etc. The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

In January 2004, we organized the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community"). The SIGCSE Board approved the charter, because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for dissemination of information concerning successful gender issues projects and can provide time for discussion and brainstorming. Generally, the organizers divide the audience into a discussion subgroup and a dissemination section. We select discussion topics from our large listserv membership and offer short project presentations from representatives of ACM-W, NCWIT, ABI, CDC, CRA-W, etc. Last year, our listserv membership selected "assessment of Women-in-Computing projects" as the discussion topic. The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

In January 2004, we organized the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community"). The SIGCSE Board approved the charter, because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for dissemination of information concerning successful gender issues projects and can provide time for discussion and brainstorming. We select projects to highlight through listserv communication and through our connections with ACM-W, NCWIT, ABI, CDC, CRA-W, etc. The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organization and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

Workload management is the discipline of effectively monitoring, managing and controlling work flow across computing systems. In particular, workload management in database management systems (DBMSs) is the process or act of monitoring and controlling work (i.e., requests) executing on a database system in order to make efficient use of system resources in addition to achieving any performance objectives assigned to that work. In the past decade, workload management studies and practice have made considerable progress in both academia and industry. New techniques have been proposed by researchers, and new features of workload management facilities have been implemented in most commercial database products. In this paper, we provide a systematic study of workload management in today's DBMSs by developing a taxonomy of workload management techniques. We apply the taxonomy to evaluate and classify existing workload management techniques implemented in the commercial databases and available in the recent research literature. We also introduce the underlying principles of today's workload management technology for DBMSs, discuss open problems and outline some research opportunities in this research area.

In January 2004, we organized the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community"). The SIGCSE Board approved the charter, because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for dissemination of information concerning successful gender issues projects and can provide time for discussion and brainstorming. We select projects to highlight through listserv communication and through our connections with ACM-W, NCWIT, ABI, CDC, CRA-W, etc. The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organization and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.

Workload management is the discipline of effectively monitoring, managing and controlling work flow across computing systems. In particular, workload management in database management systems (DBMSs) is the process or act of monitoring and controlling work (i.e., requests) executing on a database system in order to make efficient use of system resources in addition to achieving any performance objectives assigned to that work. In the past decade, workload management studies and practice have made considerable progress in both academia and industry. New techniques have been proposed by researchers, and new features of workload management facilities have been implemented in most commercial database products. In this paper, we provide a systematic study of workload management in today's DBMSs by developing a taxonomy of workload management techniques. We apply the taxonomy to evaluate and classify existing workload management techniques implemented in the commercial databases and available in the recent research literature. We also introduce the underlying principles of today's workload management technology for DBMSs, discuss open problems, and outline some research opportunities in this research area.

Cloud computing, with its support for elastic resources that are available on an on-demand, pay-as-you-go basis, is an attractive platform for hosting Web-based services that have variable demand, yet consistent performance requirements. Effective service management is mandatory in order for services running in the cloud, which we call elastic services, to be cost-effective. In this paper we describe a management framework to facilitate elasticity of resource consumption by services in the cloud. We extend our framework for services management with the necessary concepts and properties to support elastic services. A prototype implementation is described.

Workload management is the discipline of effectively managing, controlling, and monitoring work flow across computing systems. It is an increasingly important requirement of database management systems (DBMSs) in view of the trends towards server consolidation and more diverse workloads. Workload management is necessary so the DBMS can be business-objective oriented, can provide efficient differentiated service at fine granularity, and can maintain high utilization of resources with low management costs. The authors see that workload management is shifting from offline planning to online adaptation. In this article, the authors discuss the objectives of workload management in autonomic DBMSs and provide a framework for examining how current workload management mechanisms match up with these objectives. They then use the framework to study several mechanisms from both DBMS products and research efforts. They also propose directions for future work in the area of workload management for autonomic DBMSs.

With an increasing number of Web services providing similar functionalities, quality of service (QoS) is becoming an important criterion for selection of the best available service. Currently the problem is twofold. The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registries do not have the ability to publish the QoS information, and the authenticity of the advertised QoS information available elsewhere may be questionable. We propose a model of reputation-enhanced QoS- based Web services discovery that combines an augmented UDDI registry to publish the QoS information and a reputation manager to assign reputation scores to the services based on customer feedback of their performance. A discovery agent facilitates QoS-based service discovery using the reputation scores in a service matching, ranking and selection algorithm. The novelty of our model lies in its simplicity and in its coordination of the above mentioned components. We present experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach using a prototype implementation of the model.

Database management systems (DBMSs) use a main memory area as a buffer to reduce the number of disk accesses performed by a transaction. Some DBMSs divide the buffer area into a number of independent buffer pools and each database object (table or index) is assigned to a specific buffer pool. The tasks of configuring the buffer pools, which define the mapping of database objects to buffer pools and setting a size for each of the buffer pools, are crucial for achieving optimal performance. In this paper we describe an automated approach to multiple buffer pool configuration. Our approach, called BPCluster, analyses the characteristics of a given workload and partitions objects into buffer pools according to their access patterns and inherent characteristics. Similar objects are grouped into the same buffer pool, thus separating those objects that may conflict. A size configuration for the multiple buffer pools is determined using a greedy algorithm that attempts to minimize the cost of a logical read. A set of experimental results validate the approach and show that the configurations suggested by BPCluster outperform naïve configurations and, in most cases, perform as well as configurations suggested by an experienced database administrator.

As database management systems (DBMSs) continue to expand into new application areas, the complexity of the systems and the diversity of database workloads are increasing. Managing the performance of DBMSs via manual adjustment of resource allocations in this new environment has become impractical. Autonomic DBMSs shift the responsibility for performance management onto the systems themselves. This paper serves as a proof of concept, illustrating how autonomic principles can be applied to a DBMS to provide automatic sizing of buffer pools, a key resource in a DBMS. We describe an implementation of our autonomic system in PostgreSQL, an open source database management system, and provide a set of experiments that verify our approach.

The tasks of configuring and tuning large database management systems (DBMSs) have always been both complex and time-consuming. They require knowledge of the characteristics of the system, the data, and the workload, and of the interrelationships between them. The increasing diversity of the data and the workloads handled by today’s systems is making manual tuning by database administrators almost impossible. Self-tuning DBMSs, which dynamically reallocate resources in response to changes in their workload in order to maintain predefined levels of performance, are one approach to handling the tuning problem. In this paper, we apply self-tuning technology to managing the buffer pools, which are a key resource in a DBMS. Tuning the size of the buffer pools to a workload is crucial to achieving good performance. We describe a Buffer Pool Tuning Wizard that can be used by database administrators to determine effective buffer pool sizes. The wizard is based on a self-tuning algorithm called the Dynamic Reconfiguration algorithm (DRF), which uses the principle of goal-oriented resource management. It is an iterative algorithm that uses greedy heuristics to find a reallocation that benefits a target transaction class. We define and motivate the cost estimate equations used in the algorithm. We present the results of a set of experiments to investigate the performance of the algorithm.

In the not too distant past, the amount of online data available to general users was relatively small. Most of the online data was maintained in organizations' database management systems and accessible only through the interfaces provided by those systems. The popularity of the Internet, in particular, has meant that there is now an abundance of online data available to users in the form of Web pages and files. This data, however, is maintained in passive data sources, that is sources that do not provide facilities to search or query their data. The data must be queried and examined using applications such as browsers and search engines. In this paper, we explore an approach to querying passive data sources based on the extraction, and subsequent exploitation, of metadata from the data sources. We describe two situations in which this approach has been used, evaluate the approach and draw some general conclusions.