Database Systems

Welcome to the web presence of the Database Research Group at U Tübingen.

Our group pursues a variety of “all-time classic” database research questions – prime examples include query language design, translation, and optimization – but with a few twists:

We are particularly interested in the design, compilation, and optimization of expressive database languages that support rich data models and embed seamlessly into host programming languages. This has led to a database-supported variant of Haskell (Ferry, DSH) as well as efficient and scalable XQuery processors (Pathfinder).
Whenever insightful and promising, we apply techniques that have their roots in the programming languages community to the database research domain. This paves the way for expressive and elegant language-integrated queries, new query compilation techniques, declarative query debuggers, or data provenance analyzers that embrace Turing-complete SQL queries.

We love to teach the basics as well as the intricacies of database systems. Courses on query and programming language technology are found in our repertoire as well.

News

Torsten Grust

Mar 1 2023

Fully-Funded PhD or Postdoc Position

Starting April 2023 or later, the Database Systems Chair of Prof. Dr. Torsten Grust at the University of Tübingen, Germany, has a vacant position for a RESEARCH ASSISTANT (fully funded). We encourage both, university graduates and Postdocs, to apply. DATABASE RESEARCH IN TÜBINGEN Our team currently performs research in the following areas: the interplay of database technology and various aspects of programming languages and their interpreters/compilers, the compilation and optimization of new and old database query and scripting languages, the evaluation of complex (possibly iterative or recursive) computation right inside the database kernel, our primary target systems are modern relational database engines, among these DuckDB and Umbra .

A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints accepted at CIDR 2023

Tübingen returns to CIDR, this time for the 2023 edition to be held in Amsterdam (NL), January 8–11, 2023. We will report on our recent explorations into alternative forms of iteration in SQL—generalizing recursive common table expressions—that are easier to write and read as well as more efficient to evaluate than WITH RECURSIVE (which has been established more than 20 years ago but since then has been largely left untouched).