Martin L. Kersten

Martin L. Kersten (October 25, 1953 – July 6, 2022) was a computer scientist with research focus on database architectures, query optimization and their use in scientific databases. He was an architect of the MonetDB system, an open-source column store for data warehouses, online analytical processing (OLAP) and geographic information systems (GIS). He has been (co-) founder of several successful spin-offs of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI).^[2]

Sir Martin Kersten
Born	Martin Leopold Kersten (1953-10-25)October 25, 1953 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died	July 6, 2022(2022-07-06) (aged 68)
Alma mater	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Known for	MonetDB
Awards	Order of the Netherlands Lion, HiPEAC Tech Transfer Award,^[1] ACM Fellow, SIGMOD Systems Award, ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award
Scientific career
Fields	Computer science
Institutions	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
Website	www.cwi.nl/people/321

Biography

He started his career in computer science as research assistant in 1975. As of 1979 he was scientific researcher and lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Until 1985 he worked on database security, database programming languages and he developed a relational DBMS, which became a component of a commercial CASE environment from 1985 to 1991. He was visiting researcher at the University of California, San Francisco (1980 and 1983), visiting researcher Stanford University (2001 and 2002), and Microsoft Research (2005).^[3]

In 1985 he moved to Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands, to establish the Database Research Group. Between 1986 and 1990, he was co-designer of the PRISMA database machine, an RDBMS for a 100-node multiprocessor. In a follow-up ESPRIT-II project Kersten was responsible for the development of an enhanced version of SQL for documents and geographical data. From 1989 to 1993, he led a national project on the exploitation of the Amoeba distributed system for advanced database management and a national project for database design formalizations.^[3]

Data mining projects in the 1990s required better analytical database support. This resulted in a CWI the spin-off called Data Distilleries, which used early MonetDB implementations in its analytical suite. Data Distilleries eventually became a subsidiary of SPSS in 2003, which in turn was acquired by IBM in 2009.^[4]

In April 1992 he became the head of the department of Information Systems. At the same time he started the ESPRIT-III Pythagoras project aimed at performance quality assessment of advanced database systems. He remained associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit, teaching advanced courses on database technology until mid-1994. In 1992 he became an associated professor at the University of Amsterdam and a full professor in multimedia databases in January 1994.^[3]

Between 1997 and 2010, Kersten served as head of the Database Architectures research group at the CWI Amsterdam. Since 2011 Kersten was a research fellow at the CWI.^[3]

Kersten was an active reviewer for European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT) projects and scientific publications. Moreover, he was a trustee of the VLDB Endowment board, which aims to promote and exchange scholarly work in databases and related fields worldwide.^[3] Since 2007 Kersten was also editorial board member of "PVLDB" and he served on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Database Systems journal in 2010.

In 2017 he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.^[5]

In 2020 he became Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.^[6]

Publications

Martin Kersten has more than 150 publications to date.^[7][8] In 2009, a team of researchers from the CWI Database Architectures group, composed of Milena Ivanova, Martin Kersten, Niels Nes and Romulo Goncalves, won the "Best Paper Runner Up" at annual ACM SIGMOD conference for their work for on "An Architecture for Recycling Intermediates in a Column-store".^[9][10][11] In August of the same year, Peter Boncz, Stefan Manegold and Martin Kersten received the VLDB 10-year Best Paper Award for their publication titled "Database Architecture Optimized for the New Bottleneck: Memory Access".^[12][13]

In 2011, Martin Kersten received the VLDB Challenges & Visions Track Best Paper Award for the paper "The Researcher's Guide to the Data Deluge: Querying a Scientific Database in just a Few Seconds", co-authored with his CWI colleagues Stefan Manegold, Stratos Idreos and Erietta Liarou.^[14][15]

On June 26, 2014, at the annual ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference, Kersten received the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award for innovative and significant contributions to database systems and databases.^[16] Two years later, May 26, 2016, at the annual ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference, Kersten received the SIGMOD Systems Award for the design and implementation of MonetDB, a pioneering main-memory database system based on a columnar data organization.^[17] In the same year, December 8, 2016, Kersten became ACM Fellow.^[18]

Other publications include:

• 1992: PRISMA/DB: a parallel, main memory relational DBMS^[19]
• 1999: Database architecture optimized for the new bottleneck: Memory access^[20]
• 2001: Efficient relational storage and retrieval of XML documents^[21]
• 2002: XMark: A benchmark for XML data management^[22]
• 2007: Database Cracking^[23]
• 2008: Breaking the memory wall in MonetDB^[24]
• 2008: Column-store support for RDF data management: not all swans are white^[25]
• 2009: An Architecture for Recycling Intermediates in a Column-Store^[11]
• 2009: Database Architecture Optimized for the New Bottleneck: Memory Access^[13]
• 2010: An architecture for recycling intermediates in a column-store^[26]
• 2011: The Data Cyclotron Query Processing Scheme^[27]
• 2011: The Researcher's Guide to the Data Deluge: Querying a Scientific Database in just a Few Seconds^[15]
• 2011: SciQL, a query language for science applications^[28]
• 2011: SciBORQ: Scientific data management with Bounds On Runtime and Quality^[29]
• 2012: MonetDB/DataCell: online analytics in a streaming column-store^[30]
• 2012: Data vaults: a symbiosis between database technology and scientific file repositories^[31]
• 2013: Column imprints: a secondary index structure^[32]

MonetDB

Main article: MonetDB

MonetDB is a high-performance column-store relational database management system with automatic index management, flexible optimizer infrastructure, and programmable backend functionality. MonetDB (initially only called Monet) was first created by 2002 doctoral student Peter Boncz and professor Martin Kersten as part of the 1990s MAGNUM research project at University of Amsterdam.^[33] The first version under an open-source software license (a modified version of the Mozilla Public License) was released on September 30, 2004.^[34]

MonetDB introduced innovations at all database management system layers: a storage model based on vertical fragmentation, a modern CPU-tuned query execution architecture that often gave MonetDB a speed advantage on the same algorithm over a typical interpreter-based RDBMS. MonetDB is one of the first database systems to focus its query optimization effort on exploiting CPU caches. MonetDB also features automatic and self-tuning indexes, run-time query optimization, and a modular software architecture.^[35][36]

In 2013 Martin Kersten, together with Ying Zhang, Niels Nes and Sjoerd Mullender established a database services CWI spin-off company.^[37]

See also

• MonetDB
• Column-oriented DBMS

References

1. "Ten winners selected for the 2017 HiPEAC Tech Transfer Awards - Press".
2. "Martin Kersten at CWI Amsterdam". CWI Amsterdam. Retrieved 2014-06-27.
3. "Martin Kersten at CWI homepage". Retrieved 2014-06-27.
4. "A short history about us - MonetDB". 6 March 2014.
5. Cacm Staff (March 2017), "ACM Recognizes New Fellows", Communications of the ACM, 60 (3): 23, doi:10.1145/3039921, S2CID 31701275.
6. "Royal decoration for Martin Kersten". 20 November 2020.
7. Martin L. Kersten publications indexed by Google Scholar  
8. Martin L. Kersten at DBLP Bibliography Server  
9. "CWI database team wins Best Paper Runner Up at SIGMOD 2009". CWI Amsterdam. Retrieved 2009-07-01.
10. "SIGMOD Awards". ACM SIGMOD. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
11. Ivanova, Milena G. and Kersten, Martin L. and Nes, Niels J. and Goncalves, Romulo A.P. (2009). An Architecture for Recycling Intermediates in a Column-store. Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data. SIGMOD '09. ACM. pp. 309–320. doi:10.1145/1559845.1559879. ISBN 978-1-60558-551-2.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
12. . CWI Amsterdam. 2009-08-28. Archived from the original on 2014-07-04. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
13. Manegold, Stefan and Boncz, Peter A. and Kersten, Martin L. (December 2000). "Optimizing Database Architecture for the New Bottleneck: Memory Access". The VLDB Journal. 9 (3): 231–246. doi:10.1007/s007780000031. ISSN 1066-8888. S2CID 1688757.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
14. "CWI Database Architecture Group wins VLDB 2011 Challenges & Visions Track Best Paper Award". CWI Amsterdam. 2009-09-11. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
15. Kersten, Martin L and Idreos, Stratos and Manegold, Stefan and Liarou, Erietta (2011). "The researcher's guide to the data deluge: Querying a scientific database in just a few seconds". PVLDB Challenges and Visions.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
16. "International innovation award to Martin Kersten". CWI Amsterdam. 26 June 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
17. "Martin Kersten receives 2016 SIGMOD Systems Award". CWI Amsterdam. 26 May 2016. Retrieved 26 May 2016.
18. "ACM 2016 Fellows Recognized for Advances that Are Transforming Science and Society". Association for Computing Machinery. 8 December 2016. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
19. Apers, Peter M. G. and Van Den Berg, Carel A and Flokstra, Jan and Grefen, Paul W. P. J. and Kersten, Martin L. and Wilschut, Annita N. (1992). "PRISMA/DB: a parallel, main memory relational DBMS". IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 4 (6): 541–554. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.127.7966. doi:10.1109/69.180605.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
20. Boncz, Peter and Manegold, Stefan and Kersten, Martin (1999). Database architecture optimized for the new bottleneck: Memory access. Proceedings of International Conference on Very Large Data Bases. pp. 54–65.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
21. Schmidt, Albrecht and Kersten, Martin and Windhouwer, Menzo and Waas, Florian (2001). "Efficient Relational Storage and Retrieval of XML Documents". The World Wide Web and Databases. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 1997. Springer. pp. 137–150. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.36.1612. doi:10.1007/3-540-45271-0_9. ISBN 978-3-540-41826-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
22. Schmidt, Albrecht and Waas, Florian and Kersten, Martin and Carey, Michael J and Manolescu, Ioana and Busse, Ralph (2002). "XMark: A benchmark for XML data management". Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Very Large Data Bases. VLDB Endowment. pp. 974–985.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
23. Idreos, Stratos and Kersten, Martin L and Manegold, Stefan (2007). Database cracking. Proceedings of CIDR.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
24. Boncz, Peter A and Kersten, Martin L and Manegold, Stefan (2008). "Breaking the memory wall in MonetDB". Communications of the ACM. 51 (12): 77–85. doi:10.1145/1409360.1409380. S2CID 5633935.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
25. Sidirourgos, Lefteris and Goncalves, Romulo and Kersten, Martin and Nes, Niels and Manegold, Stefan (2008). "Column-store support for RDF data management: not all swans are white". Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment. 1 (2): 1553–1563. doi:10.14778/1454159.1454227.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
26. Ivanova, Milena G and Kersten, Martin L and Nes, Niels J and Goncalves, Romulo AP (2010). "An architecture for recycling intermediates in a column-store". ACM Transactions on Database Systems. 35 (4): 1–43. doi:10.1145/1862919.1862921. S2CID 52811192.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
27. Goncalves, Romulo & Kersten, Martin (2011). "The data cyclotron query processing scheme". ACM Transactions on Database Systems. 36 (4): 27. doi:10.1145/2043652.2043660. S2CID 6707515.
28. Kersten, M and Zhang, Ying and Ivanova, Milena and Nes, Niels (2011). SciQL, a query language for science applications. Proceedings of the EDBT/ICDT 2011 Workshop on Array Databases. ACM. pp. 1–12.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
29. Sidirourgos, Lefteris and Kersten, Martin and Boncz, Peter (2011). "SciBORQ: Scientific data management with Bounds On Runtime and Quality". Creative Commons. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
30. Liarou, Erietta and Idreos, Stratos and Manegold, Stefan and Kersten, Martin (2012). "MonetDB/DataCell: online analytics in a streaming column-store". Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment. 5 (12): 1910–1913. doi:10.14778/2367502.2367535.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
31. Ivanova, Milena and Kersten, Martin and Manegold, Stefan (2012). "Data vaults: a symbiosis between database technology and scientific file repositories". Scientific and Statistical Database Management. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 485–494.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
32. Sidirourgos, Lefteris & Kersten, Martin (2013). "Column imprints: a secondary index structure". Proceedings of the 2013 international conference on Management of data. ACM. pp. 893–904.
33. Monet: A Next-Generation DBMS Kernel For Query-Intensive Applications (PDF). May 2002. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
34. MonetDB historic background
35. Stefan Manegold (June 2006). "An Empirical Evaluation of XQuery Processors" (PDF). Proceedings of the International Workshop on Performance and Evaluation of Data Management Systems (ExpDB). 33 (2): 203–220. doi:10.1016/j.is.2007.05.004. Retrieved December 11, 2013.
36. P. A. Boncz, T. Grust, M. van Keulen, S. Manegold, J. Rittinger, J. Teubner. MonetDB/XQuery: A Fast XQuery Processor Powered by a Relational Engine 2008-05-19 at the Wayback Machine. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Chicago, IL, USA, June 2006.
37. "Database consulting company MonetDB Solutions newest spin-off CWI". Retrieved 2014-06-27.

External links

• Database Architectures group at CWI
• Martin L. Kersten publications indexed by Google Scholar  
• Martin L. Kersten at DBLP Bibliography Server