Yiwen Zhu

Yiwen Zhu, Kaiyu Gan, Zhong Yin

Technique of emotion recognition enables computers to classify human affective states into discrete categories. However, the emotion may fluctuate instead of maintaining a stable state even within a short time interval. There is also a difficulty to take the full use of the EEG spatial distribution due to its 3-D topology structure. To tackle the above issues, we proposed a locally temporal-spatial pattern learning graph attention network (LTS-GAT) in the present study. In the LTS-GAT, a divide-and-conquer scheme was used to examine local information on temporal and spatial dimensions of EEG patterns based on the graph attention mechanism. A dynamical domain discriminator was added to improve the robustness against inter-individual variations of the EEG statistics to learn robust EEG feature representations across different participants. We evaluated the LTS-GAT on two public datasets for affective computing studies under individual-dependent and independent paradigms. The effectiveness of LTS-GAT model was demonstrated when compared to other existing mainstream methods. Moreover, visualization methods were used to illustrate the relations of different brain regions and emotion recognition. Meanwhile, the weights of different time segments were also visualized to investigate emotion sparsity problems.

Yiwen Zhu, Joyce Cahoon, Anna Pavlenko et al.

Complex operational workflows coordinating personnel, tools, and information are central to enterprise operations, yet end-to-end automation remains challenging due to extensive requirements for human inputs and the inability to adapt over time. We present GraphMind, an end-to-end system that constructs, executes, and evolves action-centric workflow graphs without human effort. The system operates in three phases. First, a scalable offline pipeline extracts structured workflow graphs from large volumes of human resolution traces, capturing problems, actions, and their causal relationships. Second, an online multi-agent traversal engine navigates the graph to dynamically construct and execute workflows, combining graph-guided retrieval with LLM-driven reasoning at each step. Third, Adaptive Traversal Reinforcement (ATR) reinforces successful traversal paths and decays stale elements. This closed-loop mechanism enables the graph to self-optimize and adapt to shifting operational conditions. GraphMind has been deployed across four production cloud database services for incident investigation. Evaluated on production data, the system substantially outperforms a Trace-RAG baseline in mitigation reach, groundedness, and diagnostic throughput, scoring 4.95/5 in blind expert review. The ATR layer provides further gains across all metrics, demonstrating that workflow graphs can learn and improve from execution-derived feedback.

Yiwen Zhu, Mathieu Demarne, Kai Deng et al.

Software engineers frequently grapple with the challenge of accessing disparate documentation and telemetry data, including TroubleShooting Guides (TSGs), incident reports, code repositories, and various internal tools developed by multiple stakeholders. While on-call duties are inevitable, incident resolution becomes even more daunting due to the obscurity of legacy sources and the pressures of strict time constraints. To enhance the efficiency of on-call engineers (OCEs) and streamline their daily workflows, we introduced DECO-a comprehensive framework for developing, deploying, and managing enterprise-grade copilots tailored to improve productivity in engineering routines. This paper details the design and implementation of the DECO framework, emphasizing its innovative NL2SearchQuery functionality and a lightweight agentic framework. These features support efficient and customized retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) algorithms that not only extract relevant information from diverse sources but also select the most pertinent skills in response to user queries. This enables the addressing of complex technical questions and provides seamless, automated access to internal resources. Additionally, DECO incorporates a robust mechanism for converting unstructured incident logs into user-friendly, structured guides, effectively bridging the documentation gap. Since its launch in September 2023, DECO has demonstrated its effectiveness through widespread adoption, enabling tens of thousands of interactions and engaging hundreds of monthly active users (MAU) across dozens of organizations within the company.

Olga Poppe, Tayo Amuneke, Dalitso Banda et al.

Microsoft Azure is dedicated to guarantee high quality of service to its customers, in particular, during periods of high customer activity, while controlling cost. We employ a Data Science (DS) driven solution to predict user load and leverage these predictions to optimize resource allocation. To this end, we built the Seagull infrastructure that processes per-server telemetry, validates the data, trains and deploys ML models. The models are used to predict customer load per server (24h into the future), and optimize service operations. Seagull continually re-evaluates accuracy of predictions, fallback to previously known good models and triggers alerts as appropriate. We deployed this infrastructure in production for PostgreSQL and MySQL servers across all Azure regions, and applied it to the problem of scheduling server backups during low-load time. This minimizes interference with user-induced load and improves customer experience.

Carlo Curino, Neha Godwal, Brian Kroth et al.

Developing modern systems software is a complex task that combines business logic programming and Software Performance Engineering (SPE). The later is an experimental and labor-intensive activity focused on optimizing the system for a given hardware, software, and workload (hw/sw/wl) context. Today's SPE is performed during build/release phases by specialized teams, and cursed by: 1) lack of standardized and automated tools, 2) significant repeated work as hw/sw/wl context changes, 3) fragility induced by a "one-size-fit-all" tuning (where improvements on one workload or component may impact others). The net result: despite costly investments, system software is often outside its optimal operating point - anecdotally leaving 30% to 40% of performance on the table. The recent developments in Data Science (DS) hints at an opportunity: combining DS tooling and methodologies with a new developer experience to transform the practice of SPE. In this paper we present: MLOS, an ML-powered infrastructure and methodology to democratize and automate Software Performance Engineering. MLOS enables continuous, instance-level, robust, and trackable systems optimization. MLOS is being developed and employed within Microsoft to optimize SQL Server performance. Early results indicated that component-level optimizations can lead to 20%-90% improvements when custom-tuning for a specific hw/sw/wl, hinting at a significant opportunity. However, several research challenges remain that will require community involvement. To this end, we are in the process of open-sourcing the MLOS core infrastructure, and we are engaging with academic institutions to create an educational program around Software 2.0 and MLOS ideas.

Fotis Psallidas, Yiwen Zhu, Bojan Karlas et al.

The recent success of machine learning (ML) has led to an explosive growth both in terms of new systems and algorithms built in industry and academia, and new applications built by an ever-growing community of data science (DS) practitioners. This quickly shifting panorama of technologies and applications is challenging for builders and practitioners alike to follow. In this paper, we set out to capture this panorama through a wide-angle lens, by performing the largest analysis of DS projects to date, focusing on questions that can help determine investments on either side. Specifically, we download and analyze: (a) over 6M Python notebooks publicly available on GITHUB, (b) over 2M enterprise DS pipelines developed within COMPANYX, and (c) the source code and metadata of over 900 releases from 12 important DS libraries. The analysis we perform ranges from coarse-grained statistical characterizations to analysis of library imports, pipelines, and comparative studies across datasets and time. We report a large number of measurements for our readers to interpret, and dare to draw a few (actionable, yet subjective) conclusions on (a) what systems builders should focus on to better serve practitioners, and (b) what technologies should practitioners bet on given current trends. We plan to automate this analysis and release associated tools and results periodically.

Ashvin Agrawal, Rony Chatterjee, Carlo Curino et al.

Machine learning (ML) has proven itself in high-value web applications such as search ranking and is emerging as a powerful tool in a much broader range of enterprise scenarios including voice recognition and conversational understanding for customer support, autotuning for videoconferencing, intelligent feedback loops in large-scale sysops, manufacturing and autonomous vehicle management, complex financial predictions, just to name a few. Meanwhile, as the value of data is increasingly recognized and monetized, concerns about securing valuable data and risks to individual privacy have been growing. Consequently, rigorous data management has emerged as a key requirement in enterprise settings. How will these trends (ML growing popularity, and stricter data governance) intersect? What are the unmet requirements for applying ML in enterprise settings? What are the technical challenges for the DB community to solve? In this paper, we present our vision of how ML and database systems are likely to come together, and early steps we take towards making this vision a reality.