Welcome

Welcome to the Chair of Algorithms and Data Structures of Prof. Dr. Hannah Bast and her team at the University of Freiburg. We do applied algorithmics.

We address real-world problems that require efficient algorithms. We do not only solve these problems theoretically, but we also write software that works in practice. In particular, our software follows estalished standards, is carefully tested, documented, and maintained.*

A prime example for this is QLever, a fully featured database, designed and implemented from scratch, for storing and querying knowledge graphs with unprecedented efficiency. QLever is open-source and freely available on https://github.com/ad-freiburg/qlever . We provide numerous SPARQL endpoints based on QLever at https://qlever.cs.uni-freiburg.de . The largest one is for a database with over 160 billion triples (UniProt). It runs on a cheap standard PC, yet is much faster than even commercial software run on much more expensive hardware.

* This sets our software apart from most software written in academia. Most research in academia is carried out for individual problems, which are sometimes practically relevant, but often artificial. If software is written at all, it is typically written in support of individual publications, hardly tested, poorly documented, and short-lived. The reason for this sad state of affairs are wrong incentives. Researchers in all stages of their career are measured, above all, by their output regarding publications. This metric is more important than whether that research is actually useful for anything, except for more research of the same kind. Practically relevant research with thoroughly written and tested software to back it up, requires significantly more work and earns significantly fewer publications relative to the effort.