Aspect-oriented Pig Latin

The goal of this research program is to develop a new paradigm for databases, called aspect-oriented data (AOD). AOD enables cross-cutting data concerns to be added to a database using aspect-oriented programming (AOP). A cross-cutting data concern is a data need that is universal (potentially applicable to the entire database) and widespread (can be used to enhance many, different databases). Data has a wide variety of cross-cutting data concerns, including provenance, time, lineage, and security. So this research has the potential to impact every database. But developers currently have to rely on ad-hoc techniques to add these concerns to a data collection. To make the task easier, more flexible, and more general, we plan to apply techniques adapted from AOP to database management systems, preserving key benefits of the aspect-oriented approach.