278 Big Data Computing
are looking for. For example, an astronomer wants to browse parts of the
sky to look for interesting effects, while a data analyst of an IT business
browses daily data of monitoring streams to gure out user behavior pat-
terns. What both cases have in common is a daily stream of Big Data, that
is, in the order of multiple terabytes and the need to observe “something
interesting and useful.”
Next-generation database systems should interpret queries by their intent,
rather than as a contract carved in stone for complete and correct answers.
The result in a user query should aid the user in understanding the data-
base’s content and provides guidance to continue the data exploration jour-
ney. Data analysts should be abl