Assoc. Prof. Galina Momcheva, PhD is Head of the Department of Informatics and Economics at Varna Free University "Chernorizets Hrabar". She is the author of the concept of the digital competence development of VFU students. She conducts the university courses in C, C ++, Java, Processing, Data Structures and Algorithms, Interface Design, Social Networking Analyses and others. She is an initiator and head of ScratchBG. She is head of research developments in the field of the computer science for students and schoolchildren and team leader of informatics competitions.  She teaches visual programming to teachers and parents, initiates and conducts regional and national initiatives and events related to computer science. She has won numerous awards for finding and development of talents in the field of informatics. Today she faces a new challenge as the initiator and organizer of the QUERYADA National Competition in Data Retrieval.   

How did the idea for QUERYADA come into being?     The idea of the competition is mine. It came into being a few years ago due to the need to boost students’ performance in response to the challenge of expanding the professions in the IT industry. It is no secret that in the coming years the demand for specialists such as "database administrators", "data viewers", "data integrators" and others will increase.

Why did you choose the name "Queryada"?        Queryada is a combination of Query (request) and Olympiad, i.e. it is a data retrieval competition. The name was given by Evgeni Andreev. He is my student. Together we worked  out the regulations of the competition.     Evgeni Andreev and Nikolay Tsankov are the authors of the online system, in which participants will mainly compete in Queryada, 2015. This is their graduation project, which they will successfully defend at the end of October, if the competition goes smoothly.

What is your role in the competition?     I am an initiator and organizer, but perhaps my most important commitment currently is that I am a communicator between the partner companies, the students in the country and their teachers.     Some colleagues congratulate me, others believe that this event is suitable only for students, but I want to give schoolchildren the opportunity to participate.

    To add to the regulations of the competition non-relational databases, the work with semantic data is provocation for us, the authors of the competition, and also for the companies and it will surely be a challenge for the participants. I hopethat the event will be successful at the first go. The provocation to include new technologies such as large amounts of data and semantic data is important because I want to encourage students to pay attention to these technologies.

Is Queryada analogues to any event in Bulgaria or abroad?     No. There is an international programming competition for schoolchildren and separately for university students. I think the image of Bulgaria in the international programming competitions and the achievements of the Bulgarian competitors will enable to easily find the way to QUERYADA as an international format.     Globally, there is a significant increase of the amount of data collected not only by consumers but also by automated devices /systems, web users, or through smart technology. The existing variety of relational databases, the emergence of new non-relational ones and the need for their integration is a big challenge so professionals with specific knowledge are in demand.  

    Data retrieval is now both from structured and unstructured data, and something more, there is an opportunity to use related data, providing the automation of collaboration without coordination efforts.     All new opportunities in IT and computer science produce new issues in terms of security.

What is data retrieval and why is it so important today?     Data can be imagined as real facts, which are generally in the form of numbers, text and are formatted in a special way. After processing, organizing and representation in some context, data turns into something meaningful to us, i.e. in information.     Relational databases organize data in tables and impose strict requirements of principles which have to be observed in this organization.

    Thus, for example SQL (Structured Query Language) represents structured queries in relational databases. SQL commands are known as queries and include special (key) words with which certain operations such as adding, selection, updating, or deletion of data are encoded. The sequence of several SQL commands is called a query.     Recently the term "large arrays (volumes) of data" has gained popularity. These data are measured in petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,024 terabytes) or exabytes (1 exabyte = 1,024 petabytes). According to some definitions (Doug Laney) these are data that have the following three characteristics: velocity, volume and variety.     Examples of organizations that have and manage large datasets are: Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and others. 

    In terms of the way they are organized, the data can be:     Structured – they refer to data that have a certain length and format. These are numbers, dates, strings (texts). Structured data can be generated by computers or by humans. These computer generated data are a result of automated processes, and may be obtained by: sensors (RFID, GPS, ...); registration of Internet activities; sales; financial operations. Data generated by humans are due to: clicks performed by users at the website; input by users of data related to games or actions performed by users, each of which is recorded.

    Unstructured data - these are data that have no particular format. If 20% of the data that are in the businesses are structured, 80% are unstructured. Auto-generated unstructured data include: satellite images - weather data (Google Earth); scientific data - photos of seismic activity, data on the atmosphere, etc .; photos and video - security, monitoring of objects and video of the traffic, web content - Flickr, YouTube and many others.     Data retrieval means the search of datasets with a certain purpose, and the extraction of part of them according to a certain criterion. One of the options of extraction is by queries.     An important concept in the field of data is Open Data (open - free to use data). Modern trend worldwide is the opening of more data by governments and organizations, aiming at their use by more people, including voluntarily to extract more knowledge from the available data..

In what areas of everyday life is it applicable?     Any type of business nowadays uses databases for their activities. Most often we create and maintain databases for corporate activity such as production, sales, service, we work daily with customers and we want to verify certain activities in certain periods of time, invaluesabout a certainseller or buyer, about accounting activities, to improve marketing and management of a company with a view to taking more successful solutions.     We can organize a database for private purposes, for example, to improve time management, which is part of our learning skills. Then we can record over a certain period of time, what kind of activities we do every day and how long it takes us, to make subsequent analyses and then to decide what and how to make it more optimal to have more personal time.

    The difference between written, electronic documentation and the creation of management system database is in compliance with certain requirements and standardized data formats on the one hand and efficiency of the outcome on  the other. Another example is the following: after the merger /takeover / separation of two companies that had their own databases, it is needed a new one, then you have to make process of integration of their databases, which unlike the retrieval requires more knowledge and skills about the data.     The collection of data for longer periods of time and the opening of these data today enables more people to make analyses and to extract the necessary information in order to predict - to make predictions for business development or to generate new knowledge.

What are your predictions for the future of this area?

    The development and importance of technology for processing and accessing data warrants active development of new specialized branch of computer science: Data Science. This direction is ready to meet the growing needs of analyses, trend forecasting, visualization and presentation in the use of large amounts of data and implementation of advanced business intelligence.     The emergence of new professions such as "data analyst", "data viewer", "data integrator" and others. Expected skills of the modern expert in the field of Data Science include: mathematics, particularly in statistics, software engineering, mechanical self-programming; critical thinking; creativity; communication and collaboration.

    The requirements to employees open new opportunities for the development of new educational products by the universities. Currently the Department of Informatics and Economics at Varna Free University is preparing a new Master’s degree programme - Data Science, where the training will be entirely conducted in English.

To whom is the event addressed?- who may participate in it?    To university students and schoolchildren. Why people working in the IT business who are not students can not participate?     Because we want to support students in higher and secondary education. How will the competition go off?      Those who are interested can see details about the competition as they visit the site: www.queryada.com.

What do you think motivates young people to join the competition?     The desire for appearance is part of the development of a professional in a specific area. I do not support learning only through competitions, but I do not deny that competition is a strong motivating factor for young people and for their teachers.     Apart form the awards, which I will keep secret for now, the most provocative thing in a competition has always been the live meeting of the participants - even more - my expectations are that participants of both sexes will participate in this format. We have also planned a meeting with representatives of the business sector, group and teamwork.

    For me, and probably for the IT companies the biggest challenge will be the ranking list that we will create and maintain. I want to emphasize that the regulations and the ranking list will be open until 16 October  for proposals from mentors, participants and experts.

What are your expectations for the results of the conduct of Queryada?     Committed participation of the competitors and their mentors; to enhance the activity of the IT companies and even the inclusion of more companies in the coming years; support from the IT branch organizations (associations, clusters); interest shown by international business organizations; provision of funding for systematic preparation of this event; proposal by various business sectors to create new events related to their activities, to promote them and to train students with a specific profile in the field of data retrieval. What provoked you last in the field of information technology?     Infographics, Natural User Interfaces and of course the emerging Data Science.