Texera - Collaborative Data Analytics Using Workflows.

Texera supports scalable computation and enables advanced AI/ML techniques.
"Collaboration" is a key focus, and we enable an experience similar to Google Docs, but for data analytics.

Demo Video | Blogs | Getting Started

Motivation

• Many data analysts need to spend a significant amount of effort on low-level computation to do data wrangling and preparation, and want to use latest AI/ML techniques. These tasks are especially tough for non-IT users.

• Many workflow-based analysis systems are not parallel, making them not capable of dealing with big data sets.

• Cloud-based services and technologies have emerged and advanced significantly in the past decade. Emerging browser-based techniques make it possible to develop powerful browser-based interfaces, which also benefit from high-speed networks.

• Existing big data systems support little interaction during the execution of a long running job, making them hard to manage once they are started.

Goals

• Provide data analytics as cloud services;
• Provide a browser-based GUI to form a workflow without writing code;
• Allow non-IT people to do data analytics;
• Support collaborative data analytics;
• Allow users to interact with the execution of a job;
• Support huge volumes of data efficiently.

Sample Workflow

The following is a workflow formulated using the Texera GUI in a Web browser, which consists of operators such as regex search, sentiment analysis, user-defined function (UDF) in Python, and visualization.

Publications (Computer Science):

• (8/2023) Building a Collaborative Data Analytics System: Opportunities and Challenges, Zuozhi Wang, Chen Li, in Tutorial at VLDB 2023 PDF, Slides.
• (8/2023) Udon: Efficient Debugging of User-Defined Functions in Big Data Systems with Line-by-Line Control, Yicong Huang, Zuozhi Wang, and Chen Li, in SIGMOD 2024 PDF.
• (8/2023) Improving Iterative Analytics in GUI-Based Data-Processing Systems with Visualization, Version Control, and Result Reuse, Sadeem Alsudais, Ph.D. Thesis PDF.
• (7/2023) Using Texera to Characterize Climate Change Discussions on Twitter During Wildfires, Shengquan Ni, Yicong Huang, Jessie W. Y. Ko, Alexander Taylor, Xiusi Chen, Avinash Kumar, Sadeem Alsudais, Zuozhi Wang, Xiaozhen Liu, Wei Wang, Suellen Hopfer, and Chen Li, in Data Science Day at KDD 2023.
• (7/2023) Raven: Accelerating Execution of Iterative Data Analytics by Reusing Results of Previous Equivalent Versions, Sadeem Alsudais, Avinash Kumar, and Chen Li, in HILDA Workshop at SIGMOD 2023 PDF.
• (6/2023) Texera: A System for Collaborative and Interactive Data Analytics Using Workflows, Zuozhi Wang, Ph.D. Thesis PDF.
• (12/2022) Towards Interactive, Adaptive and Result-aware Big Data Analytics, Avinash Kumar, Ph.D. Thesis PDF.
• (9/2022) Fries: Fast and Consistent Runtime Reconfiguration in Dataflow Systems with Transactional Guarantees, Zuozhi Wang, Shengquan Ni, Avinash Kumar, and Chen Li, in VLDB 2023 PDF, Slides.
• (7/2022) Drove: Tracking Execution Results of Workflows on Large Datasets, Sadeem Alsudais, in the Ph.D. Workshop at VLDB 2022 PDF.
• (6/2022) Demonstration of Accelerating Machine Learning Inference Queries with Correlative Proxy Models, Zhihui Yang, Yicong Huang, Zuozhi Wang, Feng Gao, Yao Lu, Chen Li, and X. Sean Wang, in VLDB 2022 PDF.
• (6/2022) Demonstration of Collaborative and Interactive Workflow-Based Data Analytics in Texera, Xiaozhen Liu, Zuozhi Wang, Shengquan Ni, Sadeem Alsudais, Yicong Huang, Avinash Kumar, and Chen Li, in VLDB 2022 PDF, Demo Video.
• (4/2022) Optimizing Machine Learning Inference Queries with Correlative Proxy Models, Zhihui Yang, Zuozhi Wang, Yicong Huang, Yao Lu, Chen Li, and X. Sean Wang, in VLDB 2022 PDF.
• (7/2020) Demonstration of Interactive Runtime Debugging of Distributed Dataflows in Texera, Zuozhi Wang, Avinash Kumar, Shengquan Ni, and Chen Li, in VLDB 2020 PDF, Video, Slides.
• (1/2020) Amber: A Debuggable Dataflow system based on the Actor Model, Avinash Kumar, Zuozhi Wang, Shengquan Ni, and Chen Li, VLDB 2020 PDF, Video, Slides.
• (4/2017) A Demonstration of TextDB: Declarative and Scalable Text Analytics on Large Data Sets, Zuozhi Wang, Flavio Bayer, Seungjin Lee, Kishore Narendran, Xuxi Pan, Qing Tang, Jimmy Wang, and Chen Li, ICDE 2017, Best Demo award, PDF, Video.

Publications (Interdisciplinary):

• (1/2024) Wording Matters: the Effect of Linguistic Characteristics and Political Ideology on Resharing of COVID-19 Vaccine Tweets, Judith Borghouts, Yicong Huang, Suellen Hopfer, Chen Li, and Gloria Mark, in TOCHI 2024 PDF.
• (1/2024) How the experience of California wildfires shape Twitter climate change framings, Jessie W. Y. Ko, Shengquan Ni, Alexander Taylor, Xiusi Chen, Yicong Huang, Avinash Kumar, Sadeem Alsudais, Zuozhi Wang, Xiaozhen Liu, Wei Wang, Chen Li, and Suellen Hopfer, in Climatic Change 2024 PDF.
• (11/2023) The Marketing and Perceptions of Non-Tobacco Blunt Wraps on Twitter, Joshua U. Rhee, Yicong Huang, Aurash J. Soroosh, Sadeem Alsudais, Shengquan Ni, Avinash Kumar, Jacob Paredes, Chen Li, and David S. Timberlake, in Substance Use & Misuse 2023 PDF.
• (3/2023) Understanding underlying moral values and language use of COVID-19 vaccine attitudes on twitter, Judith Borghouts, Yicong Huang, Sydney Gibbs, Suellen Hopfer, Chen Li, and Gloria Mark, in PNAS Nexus 2023 PDF.
• (10/2022) Public Opinions toward COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: A Machine Learning-based Analysis of U.S. Tweets, Yawen Guo, Jun Zhu, Yicong Huang, Lu He, Changyang He, Chen Li, and Kai Zheng, in AMIA 2022 PDF.
• (9/2021) The Social Amplification and Attenuation of COVID-19 Risk Perception Shaping Mask Wearing Behavior: A Longitudinal Twitter Analysis, Suellen Hopfer, Emilia J. Fields, Yuwen Lu, Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Ted Grover, Quishi Bai, Yicong Huang, Chen Li, and Gloria Mark, in PLOS ONE 2021 PDF.
• (4/2021) Why Do People Oppose Mask Wearing? A Comprehensive Analysis of US Tweets During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Lu He, Changyang He, Tera Leigh Reynolds, Qiushi Bai, Yicong Huang, Chen Li, Kai Zheng, and Yunan Chen, in JAMIA 2021 PDF.

Videos

• Texera demo in VLDB 2020
• Amber engine presentation in VLDB 2020
• See Texera in action.

Getting Started

• For users, visit Guide to Use Texera.
• For developers, visit Guide to Develop Texera.

Texera was formally known as "TextDB" before August 28, 2017.

Instructions for VLDB 2022 Demo Paper

To try our collaborative data analytics in Demonstration of Collaborative and Interactive Workflow-Based Data Analytics in Texera, visit https://github.com/Texera/texera/wiki/Instructions-for-VLDB-2022-Demo.

Acknowledgements

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation under the awards III 1745673, III 2107150, AWS Research Credits, and Google Cloud Platform Education Programs.

• Yourkit has given an open source license to use their profiler in this project.