Matthew Wakeling

FlyMine Group, Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge
England

Performance Engineering from Scratch

Despite computers continually getting faster, there is still great demand for performance optimisation in software. In this presentation we’ll go right back to basics and tackle the theory behind performance engineering. We’ll then go through key Java features and classes that can help. We will cover various gotchas, established algorithms, useful patterns, and how to make efficient use of the increasingly common multi-CPU machines. We will also go through the performance characteristics of various systems, like CPUs, caches, memory, discs, networks, and databases, and show how to best make use of them. If you have a degree in computer science, you will probably have seen some of this already, but it may be helpful to have a refresher, aimed specifically at Java.

InterMine: An Open Source Data Warehousing Tool, Ready for Prime Time

InterMine is an open source object-oriented database system and tools, developed in the University of Cambridge to support a large genetics data warehouse system and data mining project. After six years of development, InterMine is a mature, powerful, performance-optimised system suitable for use in other projects. This talk introduces the InterMine system, and shows how to create a database, import data, query it, and easily set up a web application providing access. We will also take a peek under the hood at some of the underlying technology.

Matthew Wakeling is a software developer for the FlyMine group in the Department of Genetics, in the University of Cambridge, England. Brought up in Kenya, he has a Master of Arts in computing from Cambridge, and has been employed in various computing projects in Cambridge since. He has a particular interest in core database functionality and performance optimisation, and wrote most of the InterMine database system that FlyMine uses. In his spare time, Matthew enjoys gardening, music, photography, and wandering up mountains, preferably in the snow. Email: matthew@flymine.org